


when the ocean catches fire

by reallynotpretty



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Mild Sexual Content, Pining, Slow Burn, all the way to after debut, buckle up because we're going on a ride, from their trainee days, members are mentioned too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 18:26:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 52,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30126981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reallynotpretty/pseuds/reallynotpretty
Summary: "It's a lot like falling in love with the sun as it touches the sea."Where Jungeun chases after her dreams at a young age of fifteen and somewhere along the journey, she learns about teamwork, friendship, and what it's like to grow up loving someone.
Relationships: Jung Jinsol | Jinsoul/Kim Jungeun | Kim Lip
Comments: 35
Kudos: 204





	when the ocean catches fire

**Author's Note:**

> here are a few things before you start reading:
> 
> 1\. timeline takes place from trainee era to circa so what era. you can assume that the events took place somewhat close to each other, which is entirely for the plot’s convenience and also for my own. 
> 
> 2\. i might have messed up certain dates and details bc i don't have the time to watch all 700 episodes of loona tv. forgive me.
> 
> 3\. although this is canon compliant, the plot, however, is strictly fictional. im not assuming anything about the members' personalities, or the things that might have happened behind the scenes. 
> 
> 4\. badly written smut that's not explicitly detailed. do not feel obligated to read if such scene could be potentially uncomfortable for you.
> 
> 5\. i promise you a happy ending, as always.
> 
> [here](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTNNNoNl7ytJRbAP6Mudvz9VGSjeyMlAL) is a playlist of songs that inspired this.

_“The strange thing about the sunset is that we actually don’t want the sun to set, we want it to stay right on the horizon, not below it, not above it, just right on it.”_

_—Mehmet Murat Ildan_

_1\. Civil Twilight_

Jungeun is fifteen when she first catches a glimpse of what she might want in life.

The sauntering of light footsteps she takes from home to the rustling of her school compound is pretty much what sums up her daily routine. At a young age of fifteen, Jungeun’s mind skitters off the textbook she’s reading and stares into the far distance which holds all the secrets that she has yet to discover. 

It’s like walking along the boring equation of life without ever finding an answer. 

On her way home she stumbles upon an old music store, a dim little space at the very corner of a bustling street in which the only thing that catches her attention is the vibrant shine of the television screen, and it makes her wonder.

She wonders what it would be like to drift outside of the line, outside of the equation into a place where there’s room for imagination and dreams. Those people on television, some call them celebrities, some call them idols, some call them _stars_ —Jungeun likes that, the word stars. She watches the stars dancing along to the beat of the music with pretty smiles on their faces, and wonders if she can be a star, too.

They’re all the way up there, so, so far away, that it seems almost impossible to even land a finger on the tip of their edges. But that doesn’t mean Jungeun can’t dream—if they exist, there must be a way to reach it, to grasp all of the magic it holds. She wonders if someone like her, small and insignificant, would one day be able to shine like them, for herself, and for other people.

With all of that wondering, it’s only natural for them to be answered someday. Jungeun might be fifteen but she understands the concept of searching, it’s what the exams had taught her, it’s what her mom had told her one day when she was a little bit younger, it’s how things are supposed to be—

That answers don’t come on their own, and so, Jungeun finds them, she tries.

When she tells her mom about it, the older woman gives her a pat in the shoulder, and with an affectionate smile, she says, "Go for it.”

Go for it, she does. 

She signs up for auditions only to find out that _going for it_ isn’t as easy as it sounds. Perhaps it’d be easier if she can just shed a few more pounds, or have prettier eyes like some other girls, or have a sweet little smile that seems to always do the trick. Or just simply, try really, really hard.

Jungeun’s not too sure where the line draws at whether she’s trying hard enough or not, but she must be, she’s got to be, because as the sun repeatedly rises and sets, she feels like she’s getting one step closer towards the stars each time she goes to bed after a long, exhausting day of school and practice.

On some days, she stays up thinking if this is really what she wants. Maybe the impulsive decision she’d made is just a tiny little torch that’s never meant to be lit up, and that once it stops burning, Jungeun will go back to square one again. But it’s not really healthy to dwell on these things, so she settles on the thought that for now, as long as she can still see the little dots scattered across the sky, it’ll be enough to keep her going.

Fifteen is also around the time Jiwoo stumbles into Jungeun’s life like an accident, without a single trace of warning.

Jungeun isn’t much of a social person, she doesn’t know how to talk to people without feeling like they might pick on her flaws and flings them onto the ground, crushing all the efforts she put into making sure they don’t show. Every interaction has her worrying about what the other party thinks of her, whether she’s offended them in some way or crossed some invisible boundary.

An overthinker, she is. 

But with Jiwoo, weirdly enough, she doesn’t have to think.

Jiwoo carries a certain aura of friendliness and a blinding shade of yellow whenever and wherever she goes. Jungeun has no idea what to do with her when Jiwoo clings onto her right after they’d exchanged names and phone numbers out of politeness. Even when Jungeun tells her very firmly, face serious, “Can you please let go of my hand?”

Jiwoo doesn’t, and Jungeun is thankful for that.

They meet at the age of fifteen and Jiwoo’s never learned how to let go of her hand, not even once—their fingers are intertwined securely, just like how their lives had crossed paths in that one spring afternoon.

And Jungeun’s not a psychic or any of that sort, but she has a gut feeling that this unexpected bond they have between them will remain attached for a long, long time, especially when she finds out that Jiwoo has the same torch of passion burning within her, too. 

It had been strictly accidental, with Jungeun barging into Jiwoo’s room without ever knocking, and then presented with the sight of music sheets strewn all over the desk, and a voice that sounds almost like a touch of heaven.

“You can _sing?”_ Jungeun asks, eyes going wide in shock.

Jiwoo’s slightly taken aback by the sudden intruder, but the surprise only lasts for a second before her lips crack into a grin, all wide and cheeky. “I can do a lot of things.”

Sure, Jungeun will give her that—Jiwoo can make people smile as she pleases, can make people’s heart feel at ease, somewhat like a superhero in children’s bedtime stories. That’s what has gotten Jungeun so in awe, and it’s also what got her thinking—

If Jungeun is going to touch the stars, then maybe she wants Jiwoo to be the moon. After all, they come together as the perfect pair, it’s never the moon and the sun, or the stars and the sea, it’s always, _always,_ the moon and the stars.

Maybe, they can walk down the paths of their dreams together, the line on their wrists tied together into a promising knot.

“I auditioned for JYP,” Jiwoo tells her with a hint of disappointment in her tone. “Got rejected though.”

“Part of the process, I guess,” Jungeun shrugs. Having getting rejected by multiple agencies herself has made her a little bit better at handling disappointments and crushed expectations.

“I guess,” Jiwoo echoes her sentiment, nodding for a few seconds before she holds a pinky up in between them, eyes alight with hope and anticipation. “Hey, let’s make a promise.”

Jungeun tilts her head to the side in curiosity. “What promise?”

“I’ll keep trying, for the both of us,” Jiwoo says, wiggling her pinky around. “And you have to keep trying too, for me.”

Jungeun doesn’t let another second pass by before she’s hooking her own pinky with Jiwoo’s, because how could she deny Jiwoo such an easy request? Never, that’s the answer.

Their promise is what keeps Jungeun on her feet, even when she’d tripped a few times along the way, she holds on to Jiwoo’s words and keeps telling herself, _it’s okay, keep going._

So she does, she keeps going and running towards her dreams, _their_ dreams. She runs through her entire age of fifteen with numerous ups and downs along with Jiwoo—from failing auditions after auditions, writing exams after exams, to moving to Seoul together for highschool.

Her youth of sixteen is a little bit bumpier, with her adjusting to the big city life and having to constantly make sure she’s headed to the right direction where the stars are at. Sometimes, when Jungeun’s walking down the busy streets of Seoul, she feels invisible, so incredibly small, and she figures that getting lost somewhere along the journey is inevitable. It’s also inevitable that she’s starting to feel like there’s barely any breath left in her lungs.

She’s been running for so long, after all.

It’s often during times like this that self-doubt gets magnified, and she wonders if this is all worth the chase. Jiwoo tells her it is, and it might be true, because—

Because just when she’s starting to lose all hope, she sees a small icon popping up on the screen of her phone one afternoon. She reads and rereads the text message over and over again, disbelief pounding in her head it makes her dizzy. 

Jungeun stumbles over her confusion, and if it wasn’t for Jiwoo’s quick reflex she’d picked up from years of taekwondo, she’d be on the ground in a second. She looks up to Jiwoo, where she’s fallen literally into the latter’s arms, eyes glazed over and unfocused even as they fix onto Jiwoo’s own.

“Tell me I’m not dreaming,” it sounds like the words are coming out of someone else’s mouth instead of hers, even though she’s sure it’s her voice speaking.

Jiwoo does more than tell Jungeun she isn’t dreaming—she pushes her off and smacks her in the back so hard, Jungeun snaps out of her daze and reflexively socks Jiwoo in the stomach. 

It hurts, so it means this isn’t a dream.

Jungeun glances down at her phone once more, to double check.

_Hi, this is Blockberry Creative._

-

It seems way too far from reality that Jungeun is stepping foot into a building with shiny floor and thick pillars. Even when Jiwoo had taken her shoulders in her hands in favour of shaking them at a furious speed, screaming “you did it, Jungeun, you did it!”, Jungeun still can’t quite keep up with the adrenaline that’s thrumming in her veins.

Throughout the years of failing and trying again, Jungeun’s only ever thought about the process that is responsible for “before”, and has never once considered what she would do if she makes it pass the threshold of “after”. So far, her focus has been to improve on what she lacks and build tolerance for failure—she expects herself to trip and fall after each try, that she can’t imagine what it would be like to finally glide through the path smoothly without encountering any obstacles.

But the text message and a follow up call from Blockberry Creative proves that she’s made it to “after”, and she has no idea what to do with this new transition of her life. All she knows is that she should feel happy, ecstatic, even, and deep down, she knows she is, but there’s also a tug in her chest suggesting uncertainty.

Because what’s going to happen now?

Joining the company is just like touching the tip of an iceberg, and Jungeun will never know what’s hidden underneath until her fins are matured enough for her to dive down and take a look at it herself. But she’s not quite there yet, and whatever future awaits is for her to patiently find out, without an inkling of idea what it would look like.

The man beside her navigates their way through elevators and doors, into a space where multiple figures are scattered within the vicinity, their attention all shifted towards Jungeun when the guy calls out for introduction time.

He’s going on about the basic information that they should know about Jungeun—such as her name, her age, where she’s from—and Jungeun keeps her head down this whole time, unable to digest this sense of nervousness that’s settling in the pit of her stomach.

She hasn’t even noticed he’s done talking until an unfamiliar voice pierces through her spiralling thoughts, urging her to look up. “I’m Heejin, nice to meet you.”

Heejin’s bright smile and twinkling eyes meet Jungeun’s worried gaze, an open window that she’s sure had already given away the obvious fact that she’s terrified to the bones. Heejin picks up on it and places a reassuring hand on her arm, and it looks like she’s done this countless times before, with Jungeun being another typical newcomer that she's seen way too much of.

“It’s okay, we don’t bite,” she says, her words followed up by a friendly laugh.

Another figure emerges from behind Heejin, a girl with silky long hair and shockingly brown eyes. She positions herself beside Heejin and gives her a weird stare. “Is she bothering you, Jungeun?”

Her name rolls off the girl’s tongue so naturally that it makes Jungeun’s inside flip, but not in a bad way, it feels similar to the kind of familiarity that’s shared between two friends. They’ve never met before, but her kind expression looks like a shoulder Jungeun can lean on if things ever get too rough.

“Hey, I was being nice,” Heejin huffs and complains.

The girl laughs and turns her attention to Jungeun, sticking a hand out in front of her. “Hi, I’m Haseul.”

“Hello,” Jungeun takes it, and the gentle touch of Haseul’s hand manages to soothe her throbbing nerves, although not much, but it’s enough. Haseul and Heejin seem nice, and they’re also kind enough to walk Jungeun through the names of some fellow trainees.

The one running around making high-pitched animal noises is Hyunjin, Jungeun takes note. The doll face with pale skin and pink lips is Kahei, who’s from Hong Kong, okay, noted. The black haired girl with the sharp features, who’s the tallest among all of them, is Jinsol, sure. 

So this is what the first step of “after” looks like, Jungeun supposes it’s a good start—maybe this LOONA project will be made easier with these people around who are also taking a stroll down the pathway full of dreams, their underlying potential burning in their core just waiting to explode.

In some ways, all of their eyes carry the same light of flame, and Jungeun might be lost now, but with their heated passion shedding light on her lane, she thinks she’ll be able to find her way out some day.

-

Perhaps it’s the way Jungeun has no grasp on life when she dives head-first into LOONA that makes her stare a few heartbeats too long at the girl named Jung Jinsol—there is something about too-wide smiles and ingenious eyes that tells Jungeun she doesn’t have a grasp on life, either.

But this equation makes sense in her head: she’s got two hands, one to hold onto Jiwoo and another to Jinsol, and this chain ends with two free hands to reach out for any potential hazards while they try to find their way out of the dark.

As lost as she is, this is the only equation that has ever mattered to her because even if she’s spent gruelling years solving for the x’s and y’s, searching for answers, she still has no idea where this line will end. That is to say, if it _does_ have an absolute end that doesn’t stretch into infinity.

It’s a different, more desperate kind of lost when she looks into Jinsol’s eyes for the first time, the kind where she knows where she’s headed but doesn’t know how to get there, and the thought strikes fear somewhere deep beneath Jungeun’s sternum, like a match sparking its flame against her ribs.

Somehow, Jungeun doesn’t feel as shaky as her hands are when they timidly exchange casual greetings. The skin of their hands is soft to the touch, nothing more than mere children with flower petals as fingertips, set free into a world of thunderstorms without an ounce of defence. 

Jinsol’s palm holds some semblance to Jiwoo’s, and to Jungeun’s thin, grey blanket back in Cheongju, and the feeling is bittersweet, bitter in that the memory of her hometown already feels like a distant retrospection, and sweet in that it’s somewhere close to home.

Jungeun bites down on her tongue and prays for their success to be founded on a stable relationship as friends, not as business partners with a knack for acting—none of that empty swearing bullshit that immature teenagers exchange because they’re grown ups now with ready palms, as ready as they’ll ever be, and shaking hands on a promise is what big kids like them do.

“Kid,” Jinsol declares with her thumb hooked over Jungeun’s knuckles to keep their joined hands in place. “I beat you out by two years.”

“Two years?” Jungeun tries, but her shy approach to this new setting seeps through her fabricated confidence and comes out as awkward small talks. They’re not so much shaking hands anymore as they are holding hands, and Jungeun finds that she doesn’t mind Jinsol’s warm skin against hers. “I guess I didn’t stand a chance as an unnie.”

“Not at all. Well, not with your height,” Jinsol muses and leans forward to put a hand on the top of Jungeun’s head to further prove her point. Jungeun wants to feel offended and recoil into herself from the hit at her pride, but Jinsol’s grin shows no ill-intentions, more mirth than there is malice. “But hey, one day you might grow taller than me, who knows?”

“I’d like to see that,” Jungeun says with a hint of laughter tucked in between her words.

The way Jinsol beams in such an artless moment as this reminds Jungeun of how incapable she is at keeping a withering conversation going, the subject matter of socializing far from her expertise. 

Jinsol is an effortless savior, though, her knight in shining armor, and Jungeun is thankful because it’s almost been five minutes, and she still can’t will herself to look Jinsol in the eye for more than a few seconds out of courtesy.

She does, however, glance down at the hand Jinsol extends again and holds on with zero hesitation because this, she is sure, is the one of the few things that has made her feel grounded since the moment she stepped foot in Seoul.

“I hope you stay long enough to see yourself shine,” Jinsol says it with so much hope that Jungeun lets the words seep deep within her values. 

When they’re forced to separate, Jungeun feels as though she has already broken that promise, but she discovers only minutes later that this promise will soon come in the form of eleven other girls.

-

“Kim Jungeun.”

The voice startles her when she steps out of the bathroom shower, cramped with just enough leg space to kick out of her jeans, but a poor comparison to her bathroom back in Cheongju. It’s difficult to breathe when she steps out of the shower, with the fan barely working to ventilate all the steam, but Jungeun deals with it because there is no other direction but _through_ —this dorm is her home now, and these girls would soon become her family faster than she will ever be accustomed to.

“Hey, unnie,” Jungeun replies awkwardly even after meeting, shutting the bathroom door behind her and closing off the steam escaping. It’s Jinsol, easily recognizable by her figure towering over Jungeun and a wrinkle at the corner of her eye smile, something that Jungeun knows she’ll be seeing a lot more of in the coming years.

“I heard you were finally moving into the dorms today,” Jinsol says in a hushed voice. Jungeun silently declares her as their group’s visual even if management is pushing for Heejin. “I waited up. Didn’t hear you come in though.”

“Sorry,” Jungeun says, shying her gaze downwards. The only light that emits in the dark apartment is from the kitchen, just barely touching the edges of Jinsol’s face enough to contour the high points of her features, and Jungeun thinks it’s quite a sight to see. 

If she’s honest, Jungeun had tried avoiding the getting-to-know-each-other phase, naively hoping their friendship to naturally fall into place on its own. She’d been successful up until this point. 

“I came back from vocal lessons pretty late and didn’t want to wake anyone up,” Jungeun explains.

“Well, we prepared your bed earlier today. Come on,” Jinsol whispers, stepping towards the bedroom but not before wrapping a gentle hand around her wrist. Jungeun drops her eyes down to Jinsol’s long fingers and somehow, it makes the pungent taste of homesickness a little more bearable. “You should go to bed now, we’ve got a meeting early tomorrow.”

It’s a pleasant surprise when she discovers that the others had already made her bed a comfy space she can rest in—there’s a pile of pillows and blankets at the foot of the mattress, a sheet already pulled over it that nostalgically reminds her of her mom back home. 

The moonlight that’s filtered through the window illuminates the room a faint white glow that makes the darkness easier to navigate, enough for Jinsol to lead her to her bed. Jungeun sets her backpack down on the floor and sits at the edge of the bed, running her fingertips along her wrist where the ghost of Jinsol’s fingers still linger.

Jinsol takes one look at her and reaches out to ruffle her hair, threading her fingers through the damp strands. The feeling is gratifying, like the first breath of fresh air since she’d entered the city polluted with never-ending traffic and footsteps. The tension in her shoulders finally eases up, and Jinsol steps back.

“Hey, Kim Jungeun,” Jinsol whispers with enthusiasm as she retreats back to her own bunk bed, moonlight following her the entire way like she is a star of its own and Jungeun is a tiny galaxy in her trail of stardust. “I hope we get to know each other better.”

Jungeun doesn’t think much of it when she nods and says, “Me too.”

She’s seventeen when she mistakes the tingle on her wrist as friendship.

-

Jungeun expects life as a trainee to be hard, has heard countless stories through online forums of people sharing their experiences, and now being a trainee herself, she learns that expectations don’t always match up with what’s happening in the real world.

 _This_ _,_ is how reality takes place:

Her alarm sets off at seven in the morning every day, reminding her of another repetitious long hours she has to spend at school. Jiwoo acts like an oasis in the middle of a hot desert, Jungeun’s only salvation in the midst of having to attend six different classes in one day.

A change in routine happens after school—Jungeun doesn’t go home, no. Instead, she walks into the company building like it’s her second home, changes into an outfit that she always remembers to stuff into her bag before leaving for school, an outfit suitable for practice, and enters the studio where she knows she’ll be greeted by Hyunjin’s peculiar barks and Kahei’s friendly pat in the back.

Dance practice often stretches for over three hours, a little bit longer than vocal lessons which usually takes up around two hours of her evening. With her being freshly introduced to this hectic schedule, Jungeun sometimes finds herself unable to keep up, kneeling down against solid wooden ground in an attempt to catch her breath. This behaviour, apparently, is seen as a weakness in the world of talents who are competing for the spotlight, a cruel reality that only hits her when the instructor spits out a few harsh words into her face, _don’t expect yourself to make it to the cut if you can’t even stand on your feet._

Reality is not just hard, it’s brutal—it gives no one a second chance, and even when Jungeun is trailing behind the others and left gasping for air, she has no other choice but to force her way through if she wants this dream of hers to one day come true.

Jungeun lets it get to her, her daily boost of confidence she gives herself dissolving into a resigned slump in her shoulders. She carries it all the way through practice and back to their dorms, and it’s heavy in a way that it floods Jungeun’s stomach with disappointment, making her sick and nauseous, even though an already digested protein bar and a bowl of salad is all that’s inside. 

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Jinsol tells her, tapping a hand lightly on her head, a habit that Jinsol’s developed over the last few weeks and it’s an oddly pleasurable motion that Jungeun finds safety in—a sanctuary that takes the form of soft hands and tender eyes. “If it’s any consolation, I was late to vocal lessons once and was told to stand outside the studio for two hours.”

“Did we get scammed into a detention center or something?” Jungeun snorts, maneuvering her head to drop Jinsol’s resting hand. It slides onto her shoulder, and down to her arm where they are automatically hooked together like north and south of a magnet. Jungeun unconsciously leans into the alleviation from the contact. 

Jinsol’s twinkling laugh echoes throughout their cramped bedroom, sending contagious waves to the others who join in their conversation easily, all of them aggregating onto Jungeun’s tiny bed, for some reason.

“One time, they caught me sneaking a bag of chips into the dorms. My life flashed before my eyes, I’m not even kidding,” Hyunjin supplies as she laughs, like it hadn’t been one of the most terrifying experiences a trainee’s ever had to go through.

Beside Hyunjin, Haseul nods, shifting on her spot and Jungeun thinks she hears something creaking under the bed. “She was so delirious she tried to eat her pillow.” 

“Because I was starving, and none of you were feeding me,” Hyunjin groans, rolling her eyes at them. “Just let your friend die of hunger like that.”

Probably, if Hyunjin hadn’t been progressively sneaking unauthorized food into the dorms with her well developed stealth skills over the past few years.

But Jungeun supposes they have their reasons—like, surviving on, say, eight hundred calories per day, with no snacks allowed, and groceries consisting of too-healthy greens and tasteless oats brought by their manager, and a weight limit of fifty set by management.

From an outsider’s point of view, it might be seen as an inhuman diet, but to them, it’s already a lifestyle adapted through gritted teeth and countless nights of secret sobs. It’s a commitment that Jungeun’s tied herself to the moment she signed her contract on a piece of paper that holds an air of unbreathable pressure and unspoken promises beneath the bumpy surface.

But it’s okay, she’s going to be okay, because when she glances over her shoulder, she sees Hyunjin trying to explain a complicated word to Kahei, sees Heejin slowly dozing off and Haseul lazily playing with her hair, sees Jinsol's hand on hers, igniting all sorts of explosion behind her eyelids that she’d never thought she could see.

Off-period is when the rest of the group consolidates into one to give each other the reassurance they need, with their backs against each other and head held up high to gaze at the stars.

“Hey, Jungeun?” Jinsol calls for her, fingers tracing the back of her palm in soothing circles, yet it leaves trails of blazes that sink deep into her bones. “Don’t listen to them, alright? You’re trying your best.”

Jungeun takes in those words and lets them hover around in her chest for a tad too long, they’re so simple—nothing more than gentle words of support from a friend, but they still linger when she goes to bed, and follows her all the way into her dreams.

-

“Jinsol unnie keeps making mistakes on purpose.”

Jungeun knows she’s being a royal shit about this. Queen, even, in this particular setting, the way she finds solace in someone else’s demise and is healthily satisfied in Jinsol’s baffled composure to these harmless remarks. It’s delighting, witnessing the slow creep of red blooming across Jinsol’s cheeks out of embarrassment and nicely satiating her end goal for all of her lighthearted mocking, the accomplishment much more dynamic than she had ever expected. 

Yet it’s the same response Jinsol conveyed whenever she was the butt of any joke, pulling her bottom lip between her teeth and shrugging her shoulders up to her ears in a laugh so infectious that Jungeun can’t help but to gravitate towards Jinsol’s benign pureness, seeking out her carefree laughter that ebbed away all of her worries with the gracious chime alone. 

It’s to no one’s surprise that Jungeun had grown favouritism towards such a beautiful soul.

“There’s a part where we need to go down on the floor, so she keeps making mistakes.”

“I didn’t make any mistakes!”

Filming a practice video for Sunmi’s “24 hours” had ranked on the easier end of the spectrum they’ve done thus far, a straightforward objective which is to review their dance line and see where they can improve on. After five takes of them kneeling with fours on the ground, a somewhat sensual choreography that has gotten Jinsol all flustered, Jungeun’s mind had already devised to her full advantage against Jinsol.

Grade A, blackmail material, and mildly destructive enough to ruffle some feathers and press some buttons, just how Jungeun liked it. The plan etches a grin across her face almost immediately after the cameraman calls the final cut. Now that they’ve retreated back to behind the scenes and Jinsol futilely defending herself with flaily arms, Jungeun does not try to hide the sound of her mirth at the fact that she’s won this battle.

“Yes you did,” Jungeun retorts shyly, all of which is feigned under the innocence of her round eyes. She feels Jinsol’s fingertips climbing up the expanse of her palms and easily opens her hand to tangle their fingers. 

There’s a lot of fetching things to a character like Jinsol, the kind of person where it took actual effort to pick out the flaws and blemishes for. But what Jungeun loves the most about this, teasing Jinsol into a mess of incoherent blather, is the way Jinsol consistently sought her hand out each time in a plea to get her to stop, a tiny sign of surrender that makes Jungeun’s insides a mushy mess of mercy. 

“You little shit,” Jinsol pouts and squeezes Jungeun’s fingers tight, everything far from painful. 

Jungeun tugs at Jinsol’s wrist in a meek attempt to shove her away jokingly, but Jinsol latches onto her wrist, too, until she’s resorting with laughter to hide her lack of words from embarrassment. Jungeun feels the slightest guilt watching Jinsol salvage what’s left to defend of the situation, but she finds that she’s mostly elated because this is, undoubtedly so, Jungeun’s favourite, the kind of smile that appeared for lack of better words in place of inadequate actions.

“I treat you so well and this is what I get,” Jinsol whines, slapping her lightly on the arm. 

“Hey, you’re the one who couldn’t justify yourself,” Jungeun says, moving her hands to shield her arm.

“I’m your _unnie,”_ Jinsol huffs and swats at Jungeun’s open palms with each accented syllable. “Show some respect to your elders.”

“I know, I know,” Jungeun laughs and catches Jinsol’s hands with her own, clasping them together. “I was just joking.”

“Like hell you were,” Jinsol grumbles but stops her admonishments and fervent attempts to drive a hole through Jungeun’s sternum with her hands alone. “Why am I even friends with someone so evil.”

“Weren't you the one who said I was your favourite?” Jungeun asks smugly.

Jinsol glares at her until her frown turns into a more complacent, defeated half-pout, half-smile that feels much more like the sun that Jinsol is. Jungeun doesn’t know if she should focus on the way it reaches her eyes or their intertwined hands, but they both tug at her heartstrings until it becomes painstakingly evident how much Jungeun relishes in instances like these.

“Unfortunately,” Jinsol says, her tone a little teasing and unguarded when she adds, “That is, after Hyunjin of course.”

“Gross,” Jungeun scrunches her nose in mock distaste, nose high to emphasize the implicit _ew_.

“Wow, you’re the worst,” Jinsol deadpans, attempting to yank her hands free now, but Jungeun only holds on tighter even through her fit of shaky laughter and doesn’t take notice of the warning signs blaring red at the back of her mind. 

“Yeah,” Jungeun drawls with the ghost of a smile playing at her curved lips. “I’m pretty awful, aren’t I?”

Eventually, Jinsol gives up the fight to allow Jungeun to hold her. “You’re ugly awful.”

But even after practice hours have been narrowed down to none, the impression of Jinsol’s grasp on the flat of her palm tingles like a trickling summer rain, draining straight to her chest to leave her feeling like the calm after a beautiful storm.

-

One thing that Jungeun hates more than crying herself to sleep, is watching other people drown in sorrow without having any precautionary equipment to help them. 

It’s a helpless feeling that cuts deeper than knives when she sees Jiwoo’s radiant yellow fade into a shade of murky grey, the glowing moon now flipped over revealing its dark side. All the energy she uses to lift other people up is now dissipating into nothingness, to the point where she can barely hold herself up.

And even when Jiwoo’s already running out of fuel to burn, she still tries her best to keep going as though she isn’t human with limitations. This is one thing that Jungeun can never seem to put up with, especially when she sees Jiwoo plastering on a facade of bright eyes and big grins when Jungeun asks her if she’s okay, if something’s bothering her.

“What do you mean?” Jiwoo masks another nonchalance, but it’s transparent in Jungeun’s eyes.

“I meant, what is up with your mood why aren’t you being a big ray of sunshine?” Jungeun sits herself down at one of the tables of the busy cafeteria, where Jiwoo is on the opposite side silently munching on her sandwich. She looks up from her lashes, her dark pupils driving a force down Jungeun’s chest and leaves a bitter taste in her mouth. “Jiwoo, you know you can tell me everything, right?”

The remnants of Jiwoo’s attempted smile disappears and morphs into a slight downward turn of her lips. She gives up forcing the seemingly unappetizing food down her throat and sets it aside.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she starts off hesitantly, lips pressed into a worrying thin line. “I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m not sure if I should keep going.”

Jungeun connects the dots easily—it’s an invisible connection shared between them that had flourished into a bed of flowers throughout the years of their blossoming friendship, and Jungeun has walked around their own garden of eden for long enough that it wouldn’t take her more than two seconds to notice a flower that’s starting to wither, just like how she’d seen through the glister in Jiwoo’s eyes.

If Jungeun recalls the snippets of their shared days back in Cheongju, she can’t remember a single moment where Jiwoo isn’t bouncing on the heels of her feet, or thrusting her hand into Jungeun’s own to pull her out of the shadows, or ensuring Jungeun’s buckled up for the upcoming ride that takes the form of failed auditions and mental challenges.

A _superhero._

But superheroes are humans too.

The thing with Jiwoo is, she’s unexceptionally good at giving, but never at taking. She doesn’t understand the concept of limitation until she’s heavily wounded from head to toe, leaving trails of blood that stain the insides of Jungeun’s chest. Yet Jungeun doesn’t know how to offer a helping hand that Jiwoo wouldn’t refuse, and it’s frustrating in a way that it breaks Jungeun’s heart.

But she does try. She reaches out for Jiwoo’s resting palm to intertwine their pinkies into one, their vanishing promise coming back to life all at once.

“Do you wanna come with me?” Jungeun asks, voice careful but soft. “Me and you as singers.”

At that, Jiwoo’s brows rise with a hint of hope, her fingers responding to Jungeun’s into a reminiscent hold. “Together?”

 _Together,_ the word hits somewhere close to heart, because Jungeun’s experienced numerous together’s with Jinsol and the other girls that are the broken pieces to one future, with Jiwoo that holds all of the world’s tenderness in her palm. Together seems like a fairy tale that Jungeun’s been grasping on to ever since she was a kid. 

“Yeah, together,” Jungeun stretches her lips into a smile that she hopes is enough to ease Jiwoo up. “We’re still holding auditions, you should sign up.”

Jiwoo does ease up a little, but there’s still an amount of self-doubt in her tone when she asks, “You really think I could do it?”

There are endless possibilities to Jiwoo’s question, and if Jungeun had to be completely honest, she has no answer to that. But if she can’t offer a helping hand, then the only thing that’s left for her to do as a friend, is to believe in Jiwoo. 

“You can do a lot of things, Jiwoo.”

-

Heejin is a contagious crier, the kind that cries in earnest and sweeps everyone up in a wave of tears—everyone, including Jinsol.

It starts out easy enough, their usual monthly evaluation underway with everyone gathered in the studio, just that this time, there seems to be a bigger scheme going on that they hadn’t been notified of judging from the way that their _CEO—_ the man who only ever shows up to significant events, which obviously does not comprise of their evaluations usually monitored only by trainers and management—had made his presence to the scene. 

Their names are called up one by one, and each step they take is a representation of hours and hours of practice, of courage that needs to be rebuilt all over again when the assessment is right around the corner. The adrenaline flooding through Jungeun’s veins is a burst of energy that sits there throughout the entire period of evaluation, constantly reminding her to shift her focus on what’s before her eyes and not the past, reminding her that she’s _alive_ and one day she’ll be there to witness the flowers bear fruit.

There are a lot of whispered chatters by the time they’re done with their performances, which isn’t anything unusual, until—

Until Heejin gets called up to the front for a second time, and there’s a moment of timorous silence where breathy pants and pen tapping on desks are all that can be heard, before the man in suits flashes Heejin a delighted smile and says, “Congratulations, you’re our first girl.”

The silence drags on along with Heejin’s breath that gets progressively faster and louder, and the one that breaks it like a surprise party is Hyunjin who jumps on her feet in favour of engulfing Heejin into a tight hug, spewing out a series of _oh my god_ and _you made it_ and whatever that Jungeun can no longer comprehend as tear starts filling up in both of their eyes.

A wave of congratulations and genuine claps from the staff echo around the studio, and it sends Heejin into a crying fit of happiness as the rest of them wrap themselves up in a group hug with Heejin in the middle.

“I’m so proud of you,” Haseul says, eyes glassy with a layer of tears and hand reaching out to ruffle Heejin’s hair like the motherly figure she is.

It’s easy up until practice hours die down into the calmness of them sitting around in a circle on the studio floor, a laptop in front of them revealing Heejin’s parents. The image alone stirs up a hurricane of raw emotions and nostalgia that another sob finds its way past Heejin’s lips and fills the room with awed sadness, blanketing them in a bittersweet cacophony of cries as Heejin’s bright disposition shatters when she tells her parents she’s finally making her debut. 

Jungeun is completely still in her seat as the tears instantaneously rush to fill her eyes with the first choked sound hitting her like a freight train, so grieved that she can’t help but turn her head multiple times to absorb the sight of a tear-soaked Heejin breaking into sorrow and happiness and everything in between. 

It’s the first time she’s seen Heejin so vulnerable, and it brings a surfeiting warmth to her eyes and a lump in her throat that she can’t swallow down.

Beside her is Kahei, hand pressed firmly against her mouth, jaw tense and eyes unmoving with her shoulders squared—Jungeun knows she’s holding back the tears, too, can see the homesickness swarming on her face. On the other side of her is Jinsol, compliments about how amazing Heejin is rolling off her mouth to make Heejin’s parents smile in between tears. 

What catches her by surprise aren’t the tears staining Jinsol’s cheeks but the way she turns to smile at Jungeun through the red lining of her eyelids and the moisture clinging to her nose, eyes dancing with a million emotions and smile as bright as sunshine even in a heavy melancholy as this. Jungeun doesn’t understand it, how she looks so repleted with joy through the tears, but she glances away before her hands move on their own to swipe her sleeve along Jinsol’s cheeks, refraining because she’d rather not have salty water staining her clothes. 

This isn’t the first time she’s seen Heejin cry, but it’s the first time she’s witnessed Jinsol cry, and it’s so absurdly pretty that Jungeun steals another glance and presses her own tear-stained eyes into a napkin.

Later that night, Jinsol slips into Jungeun’s side as they make their way back to the dorms and presses up against Jungeun’s shoulder in that habitual way of hers. Jinsol’s warmth wallows it’s way into her side and across her chest more efficiently than their lousy jacket does, but Jungeun ignores the way her heart races beneath her sternum to focus on the way Hyunjin’s wrapped her arm around Heejin’s shoulder as they walk in front of her down the street.

“Heejin must really miss her family,” Jinsol’s words are tinged with a mournful sadness, just barely audible above the humming engine of cars passing by as Jinsol leans closer to Jungeun. She almost misses the muffled words, were it not for the close proximity that grants Jungeun intimate hearing on the soft inhales and exhales, just barely in sync with her wreck of a pulse.

“Yeah,” Jungeun breathes, comfortably sinking into Jinsol with heavy eyelids and words. “I miss my family too.”

“Me too,” Jinsol nods. “You never call your parents though.”

“I know,” she says, and it comes out full of guilt, twisting uncomfortably at her insides like thorns when she realizes it’s been a long month since the last time she heard her mom’s voice. She is stark in contrast to Jinsol’s filial role as a loving, caring daughter, and it makes her tongue heavy with regret.

She’s not the best at controlling her whirlwind of emotions, knowing sufficiently well that she neglects to call regularly in fear that her tears will consume her the second her mom’s sweet voice coos over the line, shaking down the mindset she’d strengthened for so many months. It happens every time she does call and ends in seizuring hiccups and swollen eyes that even makeup can’t conceal.

“Call them more often, Jungeun,” Jinsol nudges, flashing a smile with so much shine that Jungeun feels cotton balls in her throat. “Just a simple hi would make them really happy. My parents love it when I randomly call to tell them how good Haseul’s cooking is.”

“Yeah, I’ll—” Jungeun starts, caught up in the swelling of her chest because she’s both homesick and awestruck by the smile beaming before her. “I’ll call them when we get home.”

Jinsol tilts her head, eyebrows furrowing as she glances up in the sky and back at Jungeun. “It’s almost one in the morning.”

And only when Jungeun looks away does she remember the darkness that engulfs them like a sea of black because Jinsol was a tiny beam of light at the end of a tunnel and sunshine on a rainy day. 

She says, “Oh, I forgot the sun went down.”

-

The most dangerous place in this world is isolation.

The realization serves as a tiny dewdrop, slowly trickling its way along the edge of the waxy surface until it gets seeped underground and into the narrow cracks of Jungeun’s daily life, hidden beneath a layer of tired smiles and _I’m okay’s._ By the time she takes notice of this unnerving issue, she’s already embedded herself too deep into the pledge that she’d sprinkled all over her trail as she walks down this route—

This route, she learns, requires a dangerous amount of sacrifices and unvoiced conditions waiting to be met, things that weren’t manifested on the piece of agreement she’d signed a few months ago. No one’s ever there to tell her about the ugly side of a glamorous front, and learning all this by herself at the age of seventeen has molded her in a certain way that is similar to growing up, but also not quite at the same time.

She finds herself, at an alarmingly high frequency, sacrificing much needed sleep in favour of locking herself up in the studio to practice until her voice starts to crack, replacing her obvious distress with lies that she hopes Haseul wouldn’t notice, and it’s a routine that’s been repeated over and over again to the point where she can no longer feel _._

Jinsol tells her she’s overworking herself, but to Jungeun, all her efforts are nothing more than an endless spiral, with everyone else moving forward and leaving her behind with only the retreating sight of their backs to cling onto.

On some days, Jungeun holds on to the sight like it’s the only pillar sustaining her monotonous life. In others, she collapses back into the abyss and welcomes isolation with open arms.

This process, whatever people liked to call it, in some way, has stilled Jungeun to a halt, with no way to escape, no one to call out for, because everyone around her seems so far away—like the stars hanging graciously on the sky. Without anyone being within the vicinity of an arm length, Jungeun feels incredibly small and lonely, especially when the company had decided to make their next declaration.

The first announcement of Heejin’s debut is a chain reaction that leads to the second, to the third, and so on, all of which Jungeun’s takes no part in.

Throughout those painful months, Jungeun sees herself as an unimportant bystander in which her only role is to give out well wishes and congratulations. She puts on her best smile when their youngest member Yeojin, so pure and overflowing with life, wins herself the spot to be revealed as the fourth member of LOONA. 

It’s hard to pretend that it doesn’t leave a sour taste in her mouth, knowing the fact that Yeojin hasn’t been training for more than five months while Jungeun has been rooted in her spot for almost one year. It’s not an easy pill to swallow, but Jungeun proceeds to poke a finger at Yeojin’s cheek and tell her she’s happy for her, and there isn’t a single trace of lie in her sentiment.

What’s left to salvage of this extensive wait is Jiwoo’s groggy voice over the line when Jungeun calls her at two in the morning, a sense of relief immediately taking up residence under her skin the moment Jiwoo starts cursing jokingly at her untimely call. And then there’s Jinsol’s newfound interest in sneaking her way into Jungeun’s cloudy bubble, breaking it apart for fresh air to settle in.

The click of their bedroom door and light footsteps gradually getting closer prompts Jungeun to look up from where she’s hunched over the coffee table, with a pen in hand to fulfill her need of inking her day into words. 

“Why are you still up?” 

“I should be the one asking,” Jinsol mumbles in exhaustion, slotting her chin over Jungeun’s shoulder from behind and wheels closer, ever the clingy Jung Jinsol that would latch on for unconventional cuddle sessions in the middle of stiff occasions. She scans the diary, eyes glittery from a yawn escaping her mouth. 

Jungeun doesn’t feel the need to lurch forward and cover the words with her arms, the insecurity dissolving from her body and pooling somewhere near her feet, unnoticed, as she continues to write. She’s mostly distracted by the way Jinsol curls her hand around the muscle of her bicep with gentle fingers, more out of instinct than it is intentional, as is everything with Jinsol.

“I can’t sleep if I don’t write my diary,” Jungeun says, turning to glance at Jinsol who hums. Her eyes are gleaming even in this shitty lighting of their small living room when they meet Jungeun’s, the distance separating them a little too personal with just barely enough space to breathe their own respective air. 

Jungeun glances away and chokes back the way her heart falls behind one beat short before speeding up and setting her entire body ablaze like a strike of thunder. She’s been ignoring this brewing storm for almost a year now. 

“You look like you could definitely use a break,” Jungeun says.

“And you look like you need ten days of sleep,” Jinsol says, shifting so that her forehead presses firmly against her shoulder, and Jungeun can practically feel the sting of sleepiness behind her eyes. Her hand drops to the crook of Jungeun’s arm with so much ease, pressing sighs into the skin of her shoulder blade that Jungeun has familiarized like a tattoo. “What’s gotten you so restless lately?”

A pause. Jungeun looks over the lines she’s scribbled down on the book, some written in perfect curves while some are smudged with drops of tears she’d been shedding a lot at night. “What if I don’t make it?”

Jinsol moves her head to lean forward slightly, their cheeks almost touching, to take a better look at Jungeun’s neat handwriting, the uncertainty in question shattering into pieces when she mutters quietly, but surely, “You will.”

A curious thing about Jinsol is her acute understanding of Jungeun one step better than anyone else, knowing full well that the words “you will” is a breath of air breezing right through someone like Jungeun who’s forgotten how to take care of herself.

“We all will,” Jinsol says with so much conviction, almost like she already knows it, that for once, Jungeun opens up the blinds to let some light shine through her insecurities and fears.

It’s bright enough to make Jungeun believe.

-

Jungeun is mad. Well, she's mad and happy, but mostly mad. So mad her mouth hurts from frowning so hard and she forgets all about the fact that today is her eighteenth birthday.

It begins with armless office chairs, a strange comfort that provides enough support for Jungeun’s thirty-minute naps but narrow enough to require some kind of tactile effort, and, unbeknownst to her, holds the consequences of hurting her ass on the floor should she topple off. 

This is how she discovers exactly what a bruised tailbone feels like, just as staff conversations and idle rustling fades enough into white noise that she can slip into a seamless sleep.

What she remembers up until the fall is that Hyunjin’s scarf had smelled like wet grass and misery, a combination of scents that should have never made its way into her sensitive nose. Jungeun would much rather be using one of Jinsol’s sweaters that usually smells like artificially flavoured lollipops as a pillow instead, but she’d been mere seconds away from passing out, and Jinsol’s sweater is somewhere across the room, accidentally tucked under a couch to collect puffs of dust. 

It would have been worth it if Jungeun wasn’t already half-dead with sandbags for eyelids.

She’s maybe fifteen minutes into her nap, and Jungeun thinks she feels moisture just at the corner of her mouth but doesn’t move to wipe it. She’s stuck in one of those slumbers where she’s just barely conscious enough to be aware of her surroundings but delirious enough to mistake Kahei for Hyunjin and Heejin for Haseul, even with completely different hair tones and body proportions, but they were there, which is a surefire sign that she’s not dead asleep just yet.

Somewhere near her head is Hyunjin mumbling under her breath, “She better not be drooling on my scarf.”

Jungeun ignores it because she’s getting to the good part of her nap, the part where she blacks out completely into unconsciousness and finally past the stress, where Hyunjin’s scarf doesn’t make her nose want to fall off, and the exact reason why she fails to hear the approaching footsteps from bare feet padding across the wooden floor.

She’s dreaming of perfect skin and scented candles, courtesy of Hyunjin’s goddamn yarn ball of misery, when the descent into anger takes its toll.

“Jungeun, wake up! We have exactly _two minutes_ to get ready for evaluation!”

The shout is almost deafening in her state, but she barely has time to grimace at the way it pierces her ears before she’s springing up from her chair-bed setup, which falls apart under her weight and has her tumbling through the gaps in between. She crashes to the floor in a panicked, sleepy mess of half-opened eyes and sluggish limbs.

The sound of Jinsol’s laughter roaring through the room makes her head hurt with confusion until she opens one eye all the way to see a big grin on Kahei’s face, Heejin beaming at her, Jinsol kneeling in front of her laughing to tears, and the surprise held between Haseul’s palms—

—Two gigantic candles of 1 and 8 stabbed into the middle of a chocolate cake and a slovenly written _Happy Birthday May Girl_ in between. 

It takes the entirety of a birthday song until she registers the context of the situation, and she clamps her mouth with both her hands, blinking furiously as though trying to further verify that this isn’t the dreamland that she’d wander into a few minutes ago, and that everything is, in fact, real.

“ _No,”_ Jungeun mumbles into her palms, eyes wide and bottom still glued stubbornly to the floor. “This is a joke, right?”

Jinsol looks like she’s done with her rounds of laughter, her fingers wiping at the last drops of tears as she moves forward and reaches her hand out for Jungeun to take. Jungeun narrows her eyes as she considers, her line of vision narrowing at the sight of _May Girl_ displaying on the cake before she takes the offered hand and stands up, palm patting at her dusty pants.

Nobody confirms her suspicion. Instead, Haseul urges her to blow out the candles, but not before she makes a wish, which Jungeun reluctantly obeys with a combination of confusion and surprise and- _everything._

“We begged the staff to keep it a secret,” Haseul says, setting the cake aside that she’d tried to stain Jungeun’s face with, but is dodged shrewdly by Jungeun’s quick feet and surprisingly reactive reflex. “It’s our gift to you. Okay, technically you earned it, but, you know.”

Beside Haseul stands Jinsol, her hand circling around Jungeun’s in an automated motion, as always.

“We’re debuting, birthday girl,” she says, her eyebrows raised so high and eyes gleaming with so much magic like it’s manifesting life of its own. Her smile is reflective of a different kind of joy this time, the kind where she’s finally, _finally_ found the exit of the pitch dark tunnel she spent years roaming in.

Everything had happened in such a miniscule span of time that Jungeun still finds herself unable to process this pivotal piece of information. The long wait that had festered in her mind enough to keep her up for innumerable nights has now crossed the threshold into her desired career as a singer, but she’s not quite sure how to react.

Two nights ago, if she’s truthgul, she was buried deep underneath mountains of pillows, drowning in uncertainty and despondency, just the usual release of piled up thoughts. Now, though, she learns that there are a lot of different usual’s she’ll have to get used to in the foreseeable future, and she recognizes that this is all part of the process.

Funny, how things fall into place on their own.

“You don’t get to tease me about being a celebrity now, celebrity,” Heejin punches her playfully in the shoulder.

Jungeun doesn’t crumble into a pile of hot crying mess like she’d thought she would if she ever gets to debut, but she does choke back a sob in favour of taking in what’s in front of her—the people who exploded into the middle of her life like a firework, with their hands clutched tight and gradually moving closer to the stars with each barrier they tackle.

The puzzle pieces to one big picture, that's what they are.

This is a good one, Jungeun will give them that, and she’s thankful for their substantial efforts in making sure she won’t ever forget this day.

The surprise then finds Jungeun in the empty fitting room across the hall, hunched over her phone with music blasting loudly in her ears to drown out her concoction of emotions.

Jinsol follows after her, and the short minute it had taken for Jinsol to catch up to her is precisely because she was caught up in excitement in a topic which has Jungeun’s sleepy exhaustion and happy surprise dissolving from her system completely, replaced with indignation instead as she storms out of the room. 

“Jungeun, I’m sorry,” Jinsol whines, hands clutching on Jungeun’s sweater and her face unapologetic in the least.

Jungeun does not entertain her with an answer, or any kind of acknowledgement for that matter.

“Oh come on, you can’t seriously be mad at me for not telling you about Hong Kong, it was supposed to be a _surprise,”_ Jinsol plops in the chair beside her and leans half her torso on the table to look into Jungeun’s face. Jungeun wants to punch the smile right off but resorts to staring intense lasers of high magnitude at her Naver homescreen. “You’re not gonna ignore me for the rest of the year now are you?”

Jungeun doesn’t blink.

“Oh my god, don’t ignore me for a year,” Jinsol says, hysterics much more subdued now with the threat of Jungeun’s unrelenting grudges at hand. “Jungeun.”

Jungeun scrolls up. Everyone knows the least of her interests are in current events of the political and economical kind, and she’s fooling no one pretending to be more interested in these headlines about stocks than Jinsol’s futile attempts at apologizing.

“Hey, don’t be mad, okay? I’ll be in Hong Kong for just three days to film a cameo for Kahei’s music video, and I’ll be back before you even know it,” Jinsol tries to explain, resting the side of her head on the table now, gaze still staring right through Jungeun. “It’s your birthday, and we’re _debuting,_ shouldn’t you be happy—will you look at me and stop moping? I know you don’t give a shit about—” Jinsol lifts her head to glance at her screen. “—nuclear plant construction projects.”

Jungeun finally gives in out of irritation and looks up, directing an icy glare at Jinsol. She leans back in the chair with a resigned sigh. “You also didn’t tell me you’re dying your hair blonde.”

“Well now you know,” Jinsol beams, completely unfazed by the icicles in her tone. She reaches forward to yank Jungeun’s earbuds out. “Funny how you’re more concerned with me leaving in three days and my hair colour of choice than your own debut.”

“I _am_ concerned and _happy_ about my debut,” Jungeun emphasizes, snatching her earphones back but not bothering to put them back in. She stands from her seat, careful not to stomp her feet on the way out. “Now leave me alone.”

“I already said I was sorry, princess,” Jinsol pouts but takes full advantage of Jungeun’s slowly crumbling resolve, swiftly catching up to wrap thin arms around Jungeun’s torso from behind and hooking her chin over her shoulder, holding on persistently when Jungeun starts thrashing for her to let go. But Jinsol knows Jungeun better than anyone else to understand just how pliant she can become from Jinsol’s back hugs, given enough patience after her fit of thrashing to find out. “I’ll let you nap on my lap any time you want, way more cushion than Hyunjin’s old scarf.”

Jungeun’s glare falters for a fleeting second that Jinsol doesn’t catch, but she doesn’t reject the offer, either, the ultimate sign that Jungeun is sold, only partly out of happiness from the good news before and mostly from her Jinsol-centric soft spot.

“Whatever,” Jungeun grumbles, leading the way to the dance studio with Jinsol attached to her back. “Don’t you have a debut to get ready for?”

But Jinsol hugs closer until they’re stumbling over each other’s feet and buries her nose against Jungeun’s nape affectionately. 

_“Our_ debut,” Jinsol breathes down her neck. “See? I told you we’d make it.”

Later that night, Jungeun sleeps with ease and dreams of touching the stars.

-

Jungeun overthinks.

She lets everything wallow far back into the caverns of her mind and root itself in the heart of all her thoughts. It’s not that she likes to complicate matters, quite the opposite, if she’s truthful. But it’s just like her to pick apart things that take up a significant part of her life, her worst, but not limited to, flaw.

Her debut is set to come about in three months, with Jinsol’s being just short of one month away from hers, and it should be something worth celebrating about, a glossy ball of joy that’s supposed to drag on and on until Jungeun gets a gratifying taste of success and fame. With the temporary dazzle of good news dawning on her lane, she’s forgotten about the urgency and deadlines that come along with it.

In a matter of seconds there are scattered papers of lyrics thrown into her face, songs that she’s expected to finish the recording of by the end of this week, rushed choreographies that she just couldn’t seem to get her body in sync with, not with all the excruciating responsibilities and expectations sitting heavily on her shoulders, threatening to weigh her down.

When all things come at once is when Jungeun starts to suffocate in hideous thoughts. She’s spent wearying years chasing after the stars and all the paths she’s taken are persistently roped to this debut, a precious emerald of hope that pierces through her blurry vision. Yet it feels so unbelievably fragile as though it would slip right through her fingertips if she doesn’t make a subsidiary effort to hold on to it.

As things become increasingly more demanding, Jungeun finds it difficult to maintain her balance on the first peak of success in her life, and she wonders what it would be like to fall. To fall so deep into the black hole that her insides become twisted, or she loses an arm, or a leg. 

And then, what would it feel like to have to crawl her way back up again?

Well, nothing rewarding ever comes from mulling over such negativity, so she shakes her head in an attempt to quiver all the thoughts away to focus on Jinsol’s rhythmic breathing and the sheets of lyrics at hand instead.

The demo songs are playing softly in the background of this tiny recording studio, just loud enough to not interrupt their occasional discussion on different parts of their song. Jungeun shifts her attention to the sheets, eyes scanning thoroughly through the titles— _Eclipse_ sounds like a song that would complement her image well. Her thumbs hover above the lines as she takes in the context of the song, and then coming to an abrupt halt at a certain title that catches her attention, the one printed just two pages after Eclipse.

 _Love Letter,_ it writes.

As if on cue, the music in the background shuffles to the exact song Jungeun’s furrowing her eyebrows at, the melodic tune flowing smoothly into the labyrinth of her mind. Jungeun takes an immediate liking to the song, but what really got her so transfixed, is the meaning it’s trying to convey.

Where two souls are romantically tied together for an inexplicable reason, the connection breaks for another reason that can’t be put into words, and the heartbreak is highlighted in such a way that Jungeun can almost feel it, if the sudden churn of her chest is anything to go by. And as crazy as it sounds, it feels like the lyrics are speaking to her, each syllable representative of a long lost answer, yet it raises so many questions.

If Jungeun thinks back to the previous months and substituting proper meals with cubes of ice, she recalls a part of herself that had chipped away—that is, the part of her that was meant to experience heartache and longing and rejection and everything in between. It’s exactly this missing piece from the greater whole that makes Jungeun yearn to make sense of the stomach butterflies that fill her insides simply from being close to Jinsol.

She looks up and sees the city lights flickering outside of their company building washing a colour glow on Jinsol’s cheekbones that soften the sharp edges into something smoother, like tender loving. The light was always such a gentle embrace against Jinsol, and Jungeun can’t help but to be envious towards something inanimate. Jinsol looks impossibly more delicate like this, and Jungeun glances at her every few seconds from her seat while Jinsol flips through the lyrics, her legs thrown over Jungeun’s lap. 

With their bodies pressed close on the couch of the studio and Jungeun’s hands idly smoothing up and down the expanse of Jinsol’s calves, Jungeun can watch her from this angle with an unguarded intention and search her face for distinct answers. She vaguely associates the feeling to that of staring at the pages of an english novel, whereas discerning the shadows of Jinsol’s neck proved to be much less justifying, just like her lack of linguistic brilliance.

It’s exactly as it seems: trying to make out a foreign language she’s barely spoken more than five words of.

Jinsol is expressive by nature, just as much movement as she is vocally enthusiastic, an open book so easy to read that Jungeun could pick up on her emotions through the fervency of touch alone. Reading between the lines is entirely superfluous when it comes to someone like Jinsol, yet in this moment, the realization that all she can really discern is just how much she wants to run her finger along the edge of Jinsol’s jaw is jarring, and her hands still its ministrations on Jinsol’s calf.

Jinsol looks up at her instinctively from the pause, picking up on the faltering movements and reflection of cities following her every move when she sits up a little to direct a questioning glance her way with catlike resemblance.

“You okay?” Jinsol asks quietly, half concern, the other, curiosity. “You look like you’re thinking up a storm.”

“Yeah,” Jungeun responds, shaking her head to shuck out of the daunting daze she’d momentarily spiraled into. Her eyes meet Jinsol’s when she glances up from where she’d been boring holes into the paper. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Jinsol pulls her lips to one side in thoughtful skepticism before giving Jungeun one last look and slouches her body back down to focus all undivided attention back on her songs. Jungeun is thankful, the way Jinsol never interrogated her with questions much like Haseul would, who is the type to bombard her without so much stall time for the repercussion from inexcusable reponses.

“Have you ever been in love?” Jungeun whispers without thinking too much into it, running her thumb down the line of Jinsol’s tibia while reading off the lyrics in her head— _It’s like my heart can’t bloom again._

Jinsol hums as she runs the question through her mind, gears churning into motion. “Once, maybe. I think I got pretty close.”

“What’s the difference?” Jungeun asks. “Between thinking and knowing?”

“The commitment,” Jinsol says after a few breaths. “If it was love, I think I would have taken the risk and went for it, but I never found myself diving head-first into anything.”

Jinsol pauses for a moment, silence drawn out between them and filled with the gentle humming of songs trailing off. 

“What’s got you all deep in thoughts?” Jinsol chides, propping herself up on forearms and wiggling her eyebrows. Jungeun frowns and looks off to the side, setting her eyes on the microphone hanging in the middle of the room. “Someone caught your eye?”

“No,” Jungeun retorts with a far-off expression, even more far-off thoughts. “I don’t know.”

Jinsol looks at her like she couldn’t believe it more.

“It’s okay,” Jinsol says and shifts her legs away from Jungeun’s lap to press their shoulders together, now sitting side by side. “I don’t think anyone really does.”

Jungeun reaches for the remote to turn the volume of the music down, replacing digital sounds with Jinsol’s soft humming to the song that Jungeun would much rather be hearing. The side of their knees are just barely brushing, and it makes Jungeun want to press close and full until there is plenty of knee knocking and nothing in her line of vision but Jinsol’s vibrant blonde hair—Jungeun thinks she likes it better in black.

But it’s like this usually, on the most occasions, sitting close enough to feel the body heat radiating against her in fluctuating waves without summoning her clingier, sweeter fool of a counter-person that is a sucker for all things Jinsol.

“Hey, unnie,” Jungeun says more than asks, something she finds herself doing a lot lately. But Jinsol hums in response all the same. “What’s it like? Being almost in love.”

Jinsol is quiet for the better half of a minute, and stays that way for another half. But then she’s blinking her eyes and looking at Jungeun like she’s contemplating only the technicolor reflection of orange lights on Jungeun’s face.

“It’s kind of like,” Jinsol starts, searching her words for the essence of an almost-love. It’s easier and much less thought provoking to talk about an actual love than the uncertainty and fleetingness that comes right before the fall, the possibility that two paths will steer off the beaten path into something that _could have happened_ instead of _did._ “It’s a lot like falling in love with the sun as it touches the sea.”

“Like a sunset?” 

Jinsol nods idly and repeats, “Like a sunset.”

“How so?” Jungeun asks. Jungeun always asks.

“Well, it takes the sun around two minutes to go completely below the horizon, and before you even know it, it’s already dark. The sunset is pretty, but it’s something you’ll never be able to grasp.”

Jungeun lets the words wash over her, like the overthinker she is. Love is such a frivolous thing and holds as much promise as a lover who keeps a worn suitcase stashed in the closet, ready to up and leave on any given morning, sun or rain, without so much as a note on the fridge door on the way out.

She thinks Jinsol could be the type to fall for something so dangerously fleeting, the ball of fire meeting the horizon with a fervorous touch, or perhaps she’s the type to be stolen by the quaint simplicity of a normal sunny afternoon. Even if Jinsol had left a part of herself to the orange hue of evening transitioning into darkness, Jungeun thinks it’s unfair for its recipients how effortlessly Jinsol could leave the sun longing to stay longer with the sanctuary of her hands alone.

“Have you ever been in love with the sunset?” Jinsol asks when Jungeun trips into her thoughts, reaching out to hook their pinkies together in such a different yet casual way that Jungeun feels a weight of it in her chest and holds her breath to hide the jitters. “You know, in love with at least the idea of it?”

“I don’t think so,” Jungeun whispers, and she finds that she means every worth of confusion the words hold. “I was only fifteen when I first realized my dreams.”

Jungeun wants to say yes, of course, that she’s fallen in love with over a hundred different sunsets and still has more to explore, but the truth is that the vast sky of Cheongju is the only thing she’s ever really seen, and Jinsol is her wanderlust. 

Jinsol doesn’t say anything in the next few minutes, neither does Jungeun, they’re just sitting side by side, with Jinsol’s attention shifting back to the songs, and Jungeun should probably do the same too, considering the fact that she only has a few days left to practice before the company wants everything recorded.

“I really like this song,” Jinsol says after a few beats of silence, index finger reaching out to point at the page on Jungeun’s hand. “Love Letter.”

Jungeun nods in response, and without pondering too much, she agrees, “Me too.”

-

Shooting for a music video has proven to be a lot less exciting than it is being portrayed on television.

Jungeun had imagined the standard: waking up to a refreshing morning to get her hair and makeup done before she enters the comfort of her personal van, getting some shuteye that she’d lost the night before from the nervousness eating her up. Then, arriving at the set with a pretty smile for display in front of the camera while she sways her body naturally to the music. 

She imagines a professional but fun time, an untainted kind of experience that she’s been looking forward to since the day she’s made to be May girl, but the standard, she realizes, can be very different from the videos of other artists she'd been watching on YouTube. Instead, her mind draws blanks on her first day of filming, and it’s everything that her imagination does not consist of.

Waking up to a refreshing morning is now a myth set to be left behind for Kim Jungeun, not Kim Lip—Kim Lip gets pulled out of bed at four in the morning sharp, her footsteps stomping in a panicked haste when her manager urges her to hurry up. Their dorm is in a complete disarray as five different people compete for one tiny bathroom, with Jinsol whining in the background in sleepy protest of how loud they’re being, which is, predictably, swiftly ignored.

Haseul throws a jacket over Jungeun’s back before they’re all shoved out of their apartment building, the piece of black clothing hanging carelessly off one side of her shoulder. She pulls it back lazily with one hand and cradles a bag with the other as they wait for the bus out in the chilly air before dawn.

In Haseul’s hand is a camera dedicated to LOONA TV, forcing Jungeun to at least keep her heavy eyes open instead of giving in to the temptation of collapsing on her knees right there and then. Heejin’s dramatic rendition of a horror story possibly taking place at her music video set is a drop of sweet honey that successfully puts a smile on her tired face.

With the whole of 1/3 being present on a nerve wrecking day as this, Jungeun finds herself easing up a little, breathing out a gush of air and convulsive anxiety into the open.

Jungeun’s mayhem of a mind gets a good dose of sleep on their way to the set when Haseul sets down the camera a few minutes after they’re seated on the bus, loud talks shrinking down to tired whispers and lulling Jungeun into the calm before an agonizing storm. 

Heejin’s groans of protest for whatever reason Jungeun is not about to find out are tuned out throughout the entire journey until she gets drawn back from her dreams by the harsh sunlight melting through her eyelids, only realizing she’s got half her face buried into the curve of Heejin’s neck when she unenthusiastically opens her eyes to a full.

“Cosy?” Heejin asks with a voice dripping thickly with sleep, stretching her neck to the side to relieve stiff muscles that were selflessly supporting Jungeun’s entire head.

“You could have woken me up,” Jungeun says, mirroring Heejin’s motion and cracking some bones.

“I tried, but you were about as dead as a mummy,” she says that, but there is really no hint of hostility in her tone. “Just kidding. You need the sleep, shooting for a music video isn’t fun.”

Heejin, with her grandiose experiences in Paris and gaining popularity faster than a flash of lightning, albeit being one year younger than Jungeun, turns out to be absolutely right. 

She gets maybe twenty minutes of freedom when she arrives at the set, walking around the seemingly abandoned building to satisfy her curiosity with Haseul and a cameraman attached to her back. But after blinks of a few minutes, she finds herself being maneuvered around like a puppet on strings and sat down on a plastic chair with a thump while the stylist and makeup artist begin to do their magic, turning her from a barely eye catching stranger to someone worthwhile of the expensive cameras.

Her attention shifts from the loud banters of other members in the background to the catastrophe taking place in her stomach and the burst of adrenaline carding through her nerves. All those effort she poured into mental preparations the night before obviously weren’t enough, given that the first take of her just simply _walking,_ had to be repetitively taken three times because she couldn’t keep her jittering knees still at most times. It’s partly because she’s nervous and partly because of the cold biting relentlessly at her skin, the awfully short, red miniskirt and thin white top barely enough to function as an insulating layer.

It’s so easy to hold a phone in hand and click into a random music video on the most mundane days, no second thoughts needed, and Jungeun wouldn’t have imagined that two whole days of filming is indispensable for a four minute video with at least twenty staff members working their respective jobs to make sure she appears of the best quality on a rectangular screen. 

Jungeun learns that the pixelated form of her dancing for the camera requires a tedious amount of monitoring, because one small mistake could mean a substantial mishap in the idol world and no rookies would have broad enough shoulders for criticisms that come along with such a careless slip. It’s the repeating of the same take over and over again until things are of the director’s best interest that is the most time consuming, and by the time the afternoon chills down to evening, Jungeun’s bones rattle at every step she takes, exhaustion hanging so heavily under her eyes.

“How’s Kim Lip holding up?” Haseul slides herself into Jungeun’s side when their PD decides to _finally_ put down the camera of LOONA TV to give it a rest after one whole day of recording—sometimes, it grazes on Jungeun's nerves that the camera is chasing after them like nosy paparazzis when all they do is include forty short seconds of the clips in one episode.

“Barely alive, but still breathing,” Jungeun says weakly, leaning her heavy body on Haseul.

Haseul laughs, eyes turning into small crescents. “You’ll get used to it one day.”

One day, maybe.

Jungeun doesn’t really get used to any of it, especially not waking up at ass o’clock for work, but she does find solace in waking up to Jinsol fumbling her mess of hands to get changed for her shooting and bickering with Haseul over the bathroom sink, the chaos identical each and every time a member has a music video to film. She finds solace in staring at Jinsol’s peaceful expression, halfway falling asleep when she sits on the comfy chair of the salon to get her hair braided, and Jungeun really, wouldn’t mind doing this for a long, long time.

Jinsol, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of Jungeun—she seems to enjoy every part of the process, be it day or night, two hours or two days, sun or rain, and Jungeun is fascinated by how little fatigue she shows, if there is any at all, at the constant cycle of running and changing and redoing her makeup for the sake of professionalism.

 _Star,_ Jungeun thinks, when she sees Jinsol giving her best in front of the camera even when she’s fully soaked from head to toe, striving for perfection with an aggressive torch of passion burning in her eyes like she knows exactly where she is at and what she wants, which is in no way similar to the lost kid Jungeun had met a year ago.

Jinsol is one step closer to the stars.

“We’re finally done,” Jungeun says to the camera without so much looking into the lens, her vision focusing on the pale, smooth skin of Jinsol’s face while her hands busy themselves trying to dry Jinsol’s drenched torso with a towel.

“We stayed up all night,” Jinsol says, with both her hands wrapped up in layers of towels.

“I’ve been awake for twenty five hours,” Jungeun complains, but it’s only because there’s a behind-the-scenes camera capturing them into one frame, fully knowing that all it asks for is content and entertainment. Twenty five hours is but a speck of dust when it comes to all things Jinsol related. “I’m going to go home and sleep now.”

“You know, you still have to go to school after a few hours of sleep.”

Jungeun sighs, fabricated dejection acted out for the camera. Jinsol latches onto her wrist when it’s near the end of the recording, bidding goodbye to the camera so enthusiastically like she hadn’t just gone twenty five hours without batting an eye.

When the cameraman departs, Jinsol leans into her side almost immediately, shoving her sticky, wet skin right onto Jungeun’s and invading her personal space, which is pretty much nonexistent by now. 

“You’re wet and disgusting,” Jungeun tries to shove her away, but that only prompts Jinsol to leech onto her with tangled hands and fingers until it’s physically impossible to get even closer than their bodies already are.

“I need warmth, I’m freezing,” Jinsol whines, her voice coming out slightly shaky from trembling lips.

Jungeun can’t find any fight in her to not wrap an arm around Jinsol’s body in a returning hug—she can never reject her something so simple, because Jinsol flashes her a smile at the contact, the kind of smile that holds so much light that Jungeun can only wish people witnessed with as much gratitude as she does.

“Thank you for being here with me,” Jinsol beams at her, her hot breath tickling the shell of Jungeun’s ear from their close proximity.

Jungeun doesn’t turn to look at Jinsol, aware that the distance between their faces are only separated by one dangerous breath. She puts on a grin instead, wrapping both her arms around Jinsol into a protective hug.

-

This particular scene, in essence, is a joke. Jungeun skims through the script with a peculiar flush of nerves in her stomach that she doesn’t understand until _it_ happens.

Romance web dramas had always been notorious for its high demands in corny, interactive scenes full of excessive bathos and cringeworthy dialogues. Sure, being one of the leads of _Woomanna_ has its merits and feeds Jungeun’s minimal ambition for acting, she can’t complain. But being included in this bitch of a scenario bothers her in an inexplicable way, maybe even on a personal level.

Whatever “almost-kiss Jinsol on the cheek” meant, typed provokingly into Jinsol’s lines halfway down the script, makes Jungeun regret ever wanting to be an idol in the events leading up to this tragic outcome, even though all she really has to do is stand aside and _judge._

The first runthrough of the script had happened melodramatically during their first meeting with the other male actors, nothing more than professional handshakes and dry laughs out of courtesy, and more comes during their hair and makeup, running over tasteless lines with packets of papers rolled open in their hands over the dull roar of hair dryers on uncooperative strands. 

The runthrough had been successful enough that when the director calls _action_ on the scene several minutes later for the filming, they put on their best faces and breeze through the scene as fluidly as rehearsed, complete with over-dramatization and cringe-inducing guides.

_“I gotta get ready as some of them might be hotter and better at dancing than I am,” Jinsol says into the decoration-purpose-only phone held up to her ears._

_“You’re the hottest to me,” he says with a hint of amusement as he creeps his way up slowly behind Jinsol._

But rehearsals had been just that, a very half-assed reenactment of lines and a whole lot of loose mumbling and indolent movements to get the points across with as minimal effort as possible, but when that guy, whatever his name is, leans in close enough to peck Jinsol on the cheek, Jungeun puts on an expression that mirrors so much disgust that even the director is impressed, her breath hitching in her throat in sync with the way her entire body freezes up from looking at their tentalizating proximity—that wasn’t almost-kiss, that was a _real_ kiss.

When filming finally cuts to a torturing end of head-hanging magnitude, Jungeun heaves the tense breath she’d been holding from deep within her diaphragm and settles heavily on the couch in their studio to calm her angry heartbeat, symphonically pounding against her ribcage in an attempt to flee.

She barely has time to plug her earphones in all the way, trickles of a major key melody crooning against her eardrum to wash away the erratic twisting that knots in her stomach from watching someone else’s lips on Jinsol’s cheek, before Jinsol herself decides just then to nag at the sleeve of her cardigan until Jungeun is forced to yank an earbud out.

“Let’s go grab lunch downstairs,” Jinsol declares more than suggests, chucking a thumb over her shoulder. Jungeun is wondering why it’s her of all people when Yerim and Haseul are just as vacant and irrelevant, wandering aimlessly around the studio with nothing but scripts for future scenes in their hands. “I’m so hungry I feel like I could die.”

Jungeun is reluctant but always succumbs.

The restaurant’s enormous current populous is an oxygen reducing one saturated with employees of varying statuses lounging in every inch when they arrive, and Jungeun, by habitual instinct, clams up from the chatter of conversations that engulfs the crowd when they step in line to order. 

Jungeun is a lousy mingler with a penchant for shrugging unwanted dwellers away, even worse at overcoming her own remiss laziness to crawl outside their cave of a dance studio to meet new people, and it dawns on her that she may be the only one here who doesn’t know at least one other person.

Jinsol, on the other hand, is a social butterfly with inviting wings and an emphatic chatterbox that is always quick to greet anyone within a ten inch radius of her.

“Don’t be so shy all the time,” Jinsol nudges when Jungeun isn’t looking, busy staring off into space and frowning at her growling stomach. They hadn’t properly eaten since noon, and Jungeun feels the consequences all at once. “You should really make some friends.”

“Maybe another time when everyone doesn’t look like fried chicken on legs,” Jungeun stuffs her hands in her pockets and twists to pop her stiff neck. “And having you guys is enough for me anyway.”

“You shouldn’t have to depend only on us though,” Jinsol grabs at her elbow, mostly out of habit, partly out of encouragement. “It’s not healthy.”

“Why wouldn’t it be healthy if you guys make me happy?”

Jinsol swallows her words at this but smiles fondly, squeezing her arm with both hands. She’s just about to throw in another galvanizing remark that Jungeun probably won’t listen to when someone cuts in, and Jinsol, with her ever-distracted attention span, turns to excitedly greet the newcomer—Jinsol’s cringey, smile-too-big, pseudo asshole of a boyfriend in the goddamn drama.

“Aren’t we supposed to eat lunch together?” He tilts his head to the side, shoving at Jinsol’s shoulder playfully, who returns it with a sheepish grin.

“Sorry, I brought Jungeun instead,” Jinsol throws an arm around Jungeun’s shoulders, hugging her tight before letting go completely. Jungeun pretends like she doesn’t feel a burst of pride in her words. “I’ll remember next time, yeah?”

“Sure, but you owe me lunch.”

The line finally starts inching forward, and Jungeun steps ahead alone with Jinsol busying herself in an animated conversation with the guy whose name Jungeun has no intention of finding out, communicating about similar schedules and upcoming scenes and everything that Jungeun doesn’t think twice about. 

It does, however, itch at the back of her mind, the fact that Jinsol is not at all bothered about the kiss, though Jungeun understands it’s part of their job now, to act and smile and pretend that big deals aren’t big deals. What bothers her the most is that Jinsol had always been the type to give her undivided attention to the person she’s talking to and blindly dismisses those around her—least to say, Jungeun feels ample amounts of awkward standing by herself as a third wheel while everyone else is engaging in small talks. 

Even in a crowded room, Jungeun couldn’t feel more alone.

“Unnie,” Jungeun calls out when she nears the register, eyebrows raised in mild irritation. “It’s almost our turn to order.”

Jinsol’s shoulders shake when she laughs at his offhand remark with bright eyes before turning to Jungeun. “You go ahead first, just order me what we usually get!”

A punch of indignation and anger hits Jungeun square in the chest—it’s a different kind of anger compared to the previous, joke-intended ones. This one floods just below her rib cage like a fist molten air and steals the breath right from her weeping lungs. Jungeun stares red before turning to direct a dirty glare at the back of the head in front of her, so scathing that the girl shifts around to glance at Jungeun with fear glinting in her eyes.

Jungeun likes to believe she’s anything but a clingy soul latching onto her unnies for support, dependent, even, but in situations like this, she can’t help the pang of jealousy that courses through her like electric currents at Jinsol’s blatant dismissal, ditching her for someone else’s company and leaving her to fend for herself in this sea of people to feel so painfully small and irrelevant. 

She hates it when Jinsol spews wise shit and ends up being absolutely right.

Jungeun orders one jjajangmyeon for herself and greets three different people on the way out without so much as sparing a curious glance back at Jinsol’s shrinking figure, who’s watching her make a swift beeline for the exit with confusion written on her face in thick, black ink.

Jungeun faintly hears Jinsol excuse herself, but before she can jog up to catch up with her, Jungeun steers a sharp left around the corner and winds her way down the hall, slipping into an empty conference room with scattered office chairs. She sits beside the door on the carpeted flooring and offendedly chews away at her slop of noodles, willing away images of Jinsol’s laughing face with someone that isn’t her. It shimmers deep within her chest like a kindling flame, or heartburn, maybe, and she hopes shoving down more food will help extinguish it.

She eats until revenge dissipates into the black container of her to-go box, her phone buzzing in her front pocket with a text from Yerim, _unnie our scene is up next in 10, where are you?,_ and stands to toss her lunch out with only half a mind to consider trash over recycling. She heads back to the studio with cold shoulders and leftover anger at the forefront of her mind where she ignores Jinsol’s disquieted glances entirely, misty jealousy still sparkling under her skin, and collapses in the salon chair for one last touch up before they’re ushered out for standby.

Nothing is out of place, but stylists will always find something to fix to build them into the divine creatures they aren’t.

“Don’t let your anger show on camera,” the unnie says, and only then does Jungeun catch the anchored scowl on her face in the mirror’s reflection. She wiggles her eyebrows to smoothen out the harsh lines.

Jungeun is preparing for the next take while they’re on standby behind the camera when Jinsol appears at her side and slips an apologetic hand into hers to clasp their palms together, sending a shiver along Jungeun’s arm from her adamant will to soften the apparent tautness in her angled shoulders.

Against her protests and attempts to yank her hand free, she feels her fortress of pride stilting as Jinsol jostles their joined hands back and forth, much similar to the acrobats in her somersaulting stomach. She tugs her hand away one last time, fingers caught in the gaps between Jinsol’s, but Jinsol, persistent as always, holds on tight.

“I’m sorry, Jungeun,” comes the whisper, thumb swiping over the skin of Jungeun’s hand and brandishing her with fingerprints. “I didn’t mean to make you feel left out back there.”

Jungeun looks away because she, against her better judgement, has never been good at keeping subtle when it comes to holding grudges, making it easy for Jinsol to nail this on the head.

“It’s okay,” she mumbles, voice stony and unrelenting.

The staff members are almost done with the setup, rushing like frenzied mice on cue. Jungeun, finally, with unsatisfying effort, forcefully tears her hand free and steps forward when Jinsol pulls her back by the wrist this time.

“Wait,” Jinsol calls, and Yerim glances at the desperation in Jinsol’s voice with a raised eyebrow before walking into the set past them. “Wait, I’m really sorry, okay? Let’s get jjajangmyeon tonight after our schedules, just the two of us, and I’ll pay. Please don’t be mad.”

She’s so earnest in her apology, each syllable coming out like a forlorn plea that Jungeun feels her impenetrable shield falter at Jinsol’s slanted, worried brows and tight grip, until her entire resolve shatters to pieces.

“Fine,” she grumbles through her teeth, more harsh air than sound, but the way Jinsol gleams even at the gruffness of her response reminds Jungeun of why she’s always so compliant for her. “But you’re buying me jjamppong and a side dish because I already ate jjajangmyeon. By _myself.”_

Jungeun rarely gets nervous for acting out a scene with the reassurance of a second, third chance guaranteed after every line she forgets to say, but something about the way Jinsol doesn’t let go until the very last second winds her up with a cloud of fluttering butterflies, grounding her from teetering off balance.

Jinsol nods when the director ushers them impatiently to go into their positions, relief visibly relaxing her body from Jungeun’s granted forgiveness as her shoulders loosen from the square line it had formed. She can feel the satisfied glee vibrating through her palm when Jinsol beams at her with that goofy smile of hers, so big and radiating that she has to bite back her bottom lip and contain it.

Somehow Jungeun fails to hear everyone else in the room when Jinsol twines their fingers and says, “Anything for you.”

-

When daylight gives way to the moon is when the miracles happen.

It’s not that Jungeun doesn’t believe, in fact, she believes with so much depth that it hurts, but Jiwoo’s surprise is a bombshell of both shock and delight, dawning right before Jungeun’s eyes on a mundane Friday evening.

Her mind barely has time to catch up before Jiwoo is already bouncing all over her tensed up body from the excited slaps and high pitched dolphin squeals, her grip on Jungeun never once letting up as Jiwoo speeds through her words in an incoherent slur, with “finally” and “cannot believe it” being the only syllables that Jungeun can comprehend.

It’s been way too long since Jungeun had last seen this side of Jiwoo, smiling through her tears with joyful intensity without an ounce of attempted pretence and wrapping Jungeun in a hug so tight that all nostalgic memories from home come crashing onto her like tidal waves, sweeping her up in a half-laughing, half-crying fit.

“We’re going to be the next dynamic duo, Jungeun!” Jiwoo screeches right next to Jungeun’s ear, causing her to flinch ever so slightly.

“Sure,” Jungeun agrees, hands rubbing up and down on the small of Jiwoo’s back. 

Jiwoo’s arrival is accompanied along with two other girls, one with a shock of big eyes and petite figure, while the other towers over all of them, including Jinsol. They are the saviors of winter, assigned with an immediate task to debut starting from the chilly month of November faster than anyone else will ever be accustomed to.

Sooyoung holds up with the pressure just fine, it’s almost natural how well she fits into the picture, without ever a tiny bit of self-doubt, like she’s simply born with all the equipment needed for the battlefield of being an idol. Some people are stars of their own, Jungeun realizes, when she sees the way Sooyoung stands up to challenges with her head held high that has everyone in the room fascinated to the core.

Chaewon is the exact opposite, nothing but a fragile piece of paper plane liberated into a harsh environment of hurricanes, but she doesn’t stop flying despite the impairment of wings and dilated insecurities. Sooyoung, like everyone else, doesn’t hesitate to reach out when she notices how much Chaewon is struggling to dance in heels, a matter far from her expertise that is thrown into her face in mere seconds. Park Chaewon might not be as well-prepared as the rest of them are, but she gives her all and tries, and that makes her a star of her own, too.

And Jiwoo, well, Jiwoo has a special air around her. She’s something between a spark of diamond and a simple glint of lightbulb that fluctuates up and down, but it’s exactly this instability that she thrives in, a reminder of sorts that the only way to go is up and above regardless of where she stands. It’s something that never fails to captivate Jungeun even after witnessing it a few years more than everyone else, and it’ll keep staying that way, because—

Because tonight, the moon stops hiding behind wispy thin clouds, and it glows in a way that even city lights can’t compare.

“Kim Jiwoo.”

Jiwoo looks up from where she’s hunched over the tiny desk of a recording room, eyes reverting away from the lyrics sheet to Jungeun and cracks a wide, toothy grin the moment they lock gazes. Jungeun returns the sincerity with a smile of her own, and the air around them blossoms into memories and flowers and promises, just like when they were fifteen.

“Welcome to the family.”

-

Once, when Jungeun had been younger—when all of them had been younger, really—she’d taken a liking to the beach the first few times she visited there with her family. She’d picked up the habit of sitting just by the shoreline, knees pulled up to her chest. She would wait for the tide to roll, would close her eyes and hope, every single time, that it wouldn’t leave, that for once, it would stay.

Jungeun had been naive, then, but now.

Now, she’s much better.

Now, Jungeun knows that the ocean will wait for no one, the same way the sun will always disappear into darkness, will always give the world a new day, even when all Jungeun wants is for the beautiful evening sky to linger a while longer. 

There are a lot of things Jungeun has yet to keep peace with, but now, with things falling into place and dreams transitioning into reality, Jungeun thinks maybe she can be much, much better. She’s here now, after all—not the same girl who had thought that she could catch the ocean in her hands, because why couldn’t she, really, when the sun, the stars, and the moon were right at her fingertips?

But there are some things that even those blissful things are incapable of doing.

Like staying. 

“I can _hear_ you thinking from here,” Jinsol interrupts her, tapping lightly against her legs. “What are you thinking about?”

The glowing light of LA outside their hotel room is filtered through the translucent curtains, illuminating just enough brightness for Jungeun to make out the intricate strands of Jinsol’s hair. She glances down at Jinsol from her position against the headboard while Jinsol stares at the television with her head on Jungeun’s lap. The television at the opposite wall is on, but Jungeun hasn’t really been paying attention to it ever since they crawled into the comfort of the bed after an entire day of music video shooting for Odd Eye Circle’s debut. And after being forced on the roller coaster by Choi Yerim. Twice.

Jinsol was originally Yerim’s roommate tonight, sleeping arrangement picked completely at random and entirely at their convenience, but as soon as the clock struck midnight, laziness had overcome Jinsol like a bad cold, complaints spewing from her mouth about the baggage that was sneaking back to the room without waking Yerim in the process, which Jungeun can’t argue with.

And now, with their limited English skills put to use to an almost strenuous level of execution, it’s more painful than demeaning trying to understand the exchange in tonight’s choice of movie. Aside from Jungeun, who has long since given up on plot basis in favour of action sequences, Jinsol is eagerly putting in the added effort to practice her English, mouth moving silently in tandem with the dialogue and repeating random phrases without actually absorbing any of the terms.

They’re the worst at English in the group with barely enough retention to navigate them to the nearest restroom or a local restaurant if they were feeling especially ambitious on a better day. Jungeun had left her laptop in their manager’s luggage for safekeeping that she, too, was dreadfully too lazy to retrieve from the not-so-long trek down the hall while Jinsol had left everything, including her toothbrush, back at her room with Yerim, hence the resort to eighteen inches of English entertainment and leaving them with nothing but their phones. 

Not like it mattered anyway. Jungeun is more immersed with the lights dancing off Jinsol’s face than the argument transpiring on television.

“Nothing,” and then, after a moment, “Everything. I feel like we’ve come a long way, but this is really just the beginning.”

Jinsol glances up at her, reverting her attention from the screen to Jungeun, her eyes reflective of reminiscence so profound that Jungeun can’t help but melt into its maze. “And we’ve still got a long way to go.”

And Jungeun knows what Jinsol means—Jinsol, who is the hearth herself, who is warm fire and home, just like the sun. Who is what keeps Jungeun’s heart beating and makes her believe that there’s always a ray of light waiting for her right at the corner of every abyss she falls into. 

But every time she crawls her way back up she sees gleams of kind eyes, of enthralling smile and soft hands that hold the promises of future, and she’ll once again get tipped off balance into a pit where things aren’t as cold as deep ocean with the help of flickering fire.

With Jinsol.

“What would you be doing if you weren’t an idol?” Jungeun asks, out of genuine curiosity. 

“Normal stuff,” Jinsol replies almost too quickly, sounding like she didn’t even put in any thoughts to it. But then she shifts on her spot, with her back grazing against Jungeun’s thighs and turning so they come face to face with each other. “Like, things normal people do, a normal job, normal meal time, and all that.”

“Aren’t we still doing those things?” Jungeun pokes a delicate finger in between Jinsol’s eyebrows that turn downwards whenever she’s engaged in a thought-inducing conversation.

“Yeah, but how often do you find yourself with a satisfied tummy? Or a fully rested body?” It’s more of a statement than it is a question, so Jungeun stays silent, and listens. “I meant normal in the sense that there are no cameras, no managers. Just things that make us human.”

Jinsol is right in the sense that they were still just as human as everyone else, and being human entailed a package of confusing, complicated feelings about her bandmate and closest friend, complete with eye bags when she loses sleep over the matter. But it’s a most unfortunate thing, the unchanging fact that the idol life dehumanized them, like a two-dimensional image slapped on the cover of an old journal to cover up the sloppy doodles. 

And sometimes, against all optimism, she thinks that maybe it really does make them less human.

“What would Kim Jungeun be doing, then?” Jinsol asks, prying Jungeun’s finger off her forehead and wrapping the rest of them into her own.

The images of the beach flickers through her mind, reminding her of the wonders of the world she has yet to see and thousands of other sunsets she has yet to grasp. It’s a blank spot in her heart where these experiences should be painted, and she wants to fill it with different shades of colour one day, rather than finding herself listing off her regrets until she runs out of fingers to count.

“I think I would travel,” Jungeun says. Then, a pause. “Totally anonymous, cheap backpacking, and all that.”

“Let’s do it,” Jinsol suddenly says, tightening her grip around Jungeun’s hand to emphasize her excitement. The hood of her enormous gray sweatshirt ruffles up her hair in an exquisite mess which urges Jungeun to reach out a hand to fix. “After all of this is over, let’s go. You and me.”

It’s the way Jinsol says it that Jungeun finds herself unable to understand how three simple words like _you and me_ can carry so much weight, yet there isn’t a single trail of lie or pretence like empty talks between acquaintances. Instead, Jinsol says it like she’s devoting everything into pulling two strings together and tethering them into something that holds the potential of stretching far into eternity, and for a moment, Jungeun lets herself believe that eternity really does exist.

“Okay,” she says hoarsely.

Jinsol directs a smile her way, the kind that tugs at Jungeun’s heartstrings and makes all worries irrelevant. “Where do you wanna go?”

“Egypt. Brazil? Canada? I don’t know, anywhere, I just want to see more than the inside of a dance studio and hotel room.”

Jinsol hums in acknowledgement, both of them falling into silence with only the gentle noise of the air conditioner and dialogues of angry people from the television. It’s always the silence that pulls Jungeun into the burrows of her mind and makes her wonder—

She imagines what it would be like to have Jinsol all to herself for that much time, moments like this one after another, with no interruptions, no waves crashing, no clouds covering, just the sun meeting the horizon and melting into the sea. Just them. She wonders if it would change anything, if an experience like that would somehow give her the courage to reach out and ask for the sunset to stay a little bit longer for Jinsol, and for the both of them. But not forever.

Eternity may exist, but Jungeun could never ask for forever.

She tells herself it’s okay, it’s okay if she can’t touch the ocean, or the future, or whatever waltz that is beyond the horizon, because two minutes is all she needs—just two minutes of the sun’s fervour to drown her in a moment of tranquility, two minutes of Jinsol’s hand in hers, before it disappears completely into the divided line between the sea and the dark sky.

-

Jungeun feels ridiculous in this spectacular strip of a uniform with a suffocating necktie, feels like a bloated navy captain with blonde hair. But looking at her members smiling down on her with pride in the lines of their faces, and Jiwoo’s excited squeals right into her ear is gratifying in a bottomless, infinite way.

A high school graduation shouldn’t be as nerve wracking as it is, she conceives, not when she makes a living as a music performer and sings through a microphone in front of hundreds, maybe upon thousands of people daily, so accustomed to seeing her own face through pixelated colour profiles of televisions that she has long since stopped batting an eyelash about.

She’s experienced so many auditions and even more rejections that something as mundane as graduation with peers of a mutual age group should not turn her insides into a jumbled mess of organs and jitters or make her hands fidgety where she politely folds them in front for lack of better use. Her uniform is chafing against her and suddenly way too toasty for comfort as she stands in a sea of navy blue with her fellow classmates.

Jungeun knows people are whispering about her and Jiwoo, nothing subtle about the matter of two idols standing on stage with flashlights and cameras blinding them from below, but it’s all tuned out by the circulatory sound rushing loudly in her ears, the way she always clams up in such large crowds of people. 

It’s all she knows to search for Jiwoo’s hand and her members’ faces in situation where she feels small, and when she glances up to the stands and is met with their bright smiles and upbeat laughter, she’s reminded of how thankful she is that even Sooyoung had rolled out of bed to accompany her on this important day after staying up till five in the morning to practice for yyxy’s upcoming debut. It’s a feeling that Jungeun commits to memory, and she can’t help but to smile so wide her cheeks hurt, laughing by herself amongst an ocean of murmur.

She waves back at them and tries not to laugh too hard when Haseul leaps in front of Kahei and Sooyoung to flail back at her. Jinsol, on the other side of the crowd in the stands, is a stark contrast to Haseul’s boisterous ball of energy, silently watching her with gentle eyes with her chin resting in her palm, the expression so fond that Jungeun shies her gaze away and back to the stage, where a genial principle with white hair is giving a speech to the onslaught of graduating students. She feels Jinsol’s eyes on her back the entire ceremony like the sun on her neck.

“Can’t believe they let you wear pink to graduation,” Sooyoung picks at Jiwoo’s enormous pink coat that stretches all the way down to her knees, when the ceremony draws to an end and the visitors are given the okay to descend down to ground level. The unnies are laughing at Jiwoo’s striking figure, but it’s out of endearment more than anything else. 

“You guys really came,” Jiwoo beams, ignoring her teasing comment and hooking both her arms onto Sooyoung and Kahei’s to pull them closer to her sides.

“Go talk to your friends, Jungeun!” Jinsol says, and it doesn’t help that she shrinks even more from the sudden attention that this scene draws, an overbearing pressure she feels settle thick on her tongue as a myriad of gazes, from both students and parents alike, fall directly on her. She can only shake her head in return and smile in quiet embarrassment.

Jinsol is the first, and maybe the only, to sense her discomfort, the way the nerves make her palms sweaty and slippery, head lowered to the polished wooden flooring in an attempt to avoid eye contact with everyone as long as she could without appearing awkward. It’s exhilarating and has its perks, yes, but somehow, graduating in such a grand occasion with people pointing fingers at her makes her more anxious and isolated than ever. She feels so out of place in something that should feel more banal than idol life and flashing cameras, _ordinary,_ yet it is anything if not foreign but refreshing at the same time.

“You don’t want to say goodbye to your friends?”

Jinsol is suddenly at her side, tugging at her hands, and this, she is familiar with.

Jungeun huffs out the breath she’d been suppressing and says, “Already did,” before walking back to where the others are at.

The second she returns to their small little circle, Haseul is already tacking her into a tight hug, shoving Jinsol away with her short but suffocating arms. The front of her hair is roughly ruffled by Kahei, and she is certain the person jumping against her back is Jiwoo.

“Kim Jungeun and Kim Jiwoo,” Haseul coos, rocking them back and forth before leaning back to look her in the face, eyes curved into tiny crescents from the shine of her smile. “You guys have finally advanced one stage closer to being adults.”

“You two looked disgustingly cute standing in that crowd of students,” Sooyoung says and reaches out to pat at her back. 

“Yeah, when did you guys get so pretty? I think I almost cried because of it,” Kahei says affectionately, pinching Jiwoo’s cheek. Jungeun’s so full of unbridled happiness that she can’t stop smiling, and she knows it shows blatant on her face.

“We’re proud mothers,” Haseul tugs and straightens at her necktie, a ridiculous collage of red and blue.

“Time for you two to treat us some jjajangmyeon as promised,” Sooyoung bemuses with a grin, wiggling her eyebrows. “I’m seriously so fucking hungry since we didn’t have time to eat this morning.”

“Shit, me too,” Jinsol groans, rubbing at her stomach with an impressive pout.

“Guys, _language,”_ Haseul frowns, gesturing around them pointedly. “We’re in school.”

And Jungeun decides in this moment that in this home of her fellow members is a place worth living.

She’s still smiling from ear to ear when they’re outside waiting for the van to load up, the satisfaction never faltering even after the stack of detailed paperwork she blasted through before leaving. There’s a tangle of arms around her shoulders that joins her when they step out of the vehicle in front of a restaurant. Jungeun doesn’t need to turn to know it’s Jinsol who wraps around her from behind, the shock of daily blonde hair in her peripheral answers enough. 

When she turns, the way Jinsol looks at her flourishes bright and gold in the caverns of her chest, more reserved than the others but no less fond, if not more, a kind of abstruse sentiment that makes her shy her gaze away, again, and down at the slacks of her uniform.

Jinsol leans in to nuzzle at the side of her head, once, twice, and Jungeun feels a smile burst across her face, wide and true, accompanied by soft laughter that escapes her throat in glee. She could care less that people can see her goofy smile because her heart is singing, and that’s all that really matters.

“Welcome to adulthood, Jungeun,” Jinsol says, reflecting the same level of elation as her, eyes glittering in the way it always did when Jinsol is excited. “Shoot for commercials, make lots of money, maybe snag a boyfriend along the way.”

“None of those is going to happen anytime soon, probably,” Jungeun scoffs honestly. “I’m just an average girl.”

At this, Jinsol quiets, the lines of her smile softening into something mellow like saffron. “Idiot,” she breathes, pressing her forehead flush against Jungeun’s temple. “Average girl, hotshot idol, weirdo—either way, you’re still great to me.”

Jungeun’s mind takes a few sluggish seconds to catch up with her accelerated pulse, and when it finally does, she leans into the touch, presses against Jinsol’s forehead, and basks in appreciation, triumph, elation. 

“Thanks, unnie,” she says, and means it with all her heart.

“Of course,” she can feel Jinsol smile, nose pressing nuzzles into her hair. The gesture is so poignantly affectionate that it feels almost incongruous, only _doesn’t_ because it’s Jinsol. “I’m proud of you, partner.”

And hearing those words fall from Jinsol’s mouth, Jungeun thinks she really can be “great”, if only in the gentle eyes of a delicate girl.

-

If Jungeun thinks back on the speckled fragments of her youth, this is what she sees: the first day of elementary school with a lunchbox at her side and her mom on the other, middle school and getting used to six homerooms instead of one, and the bittersweet goodbyes of high school when her parents would send her off with saccharine tears welling in their eyes that Jungeun will brush off with a pretend grimace in a sad attempt to keep herself from breaking.

And if there’s anything Jungeun remembers from junior year chemistry, all of which had rapidly descended down the drain in the midst of juggling academia and pre-debut, it’s the term _catalyst_ —a substance that causes or accelerates a chemical reaction without itself being affected. It has been nineteen fumbling years, two of which were spent in four walls of the company, yet Jungeun can’t find a better word that depicts her youth.

She never expected her dreams and ambitions to propel her forward so rampantly into the real world, but if she backtracks far enough from all the stress and demands and the stressful demands, she’s still only nineteen years old, that much hasn’t changed.

She is her own catalyst, her own substance in this whirlwind of a chemical reaction called growing up, taking five steps forward with only half a mind to be prepared. It’s a challenging fear in itself to balance, but at the end of the day, Jungeun knows she’s holding up just fine, infinite, even, on her better days.

She hasn’t been the source of any controversy, and that’s a personal accomplishment as such, if she extracts herself from the minimal heat the group had been under thus far. She feeds on the concept that shit could be worse, and whether that makes her a pessimist or an optimist, it gets her through the day without fucking up.

And like a catalyst, the further Jungeun runs, the more rewarding it gets, the taste of success sweeter with each passing day. She learns this through teamwork, something she never understood growing up with a staunch sense of independence and selfhood. On the rare occasion that she gets to visit her family in between schedules, the expression that thawed on her mom’s face each time she steps off the bus is something kindred to welcoming a daughter home after marrying her off to another household, a gentle slap to the hand in comparison to the beating that is being in a rookie idol girl group in a thriving industry, hustling to make their own money.

She’s so used to striving for more, more, _more,_ expecting there to be a tail mountain after the next that the simplicities of the standard nineteen year old lifestyle now seems bland at best, if she swallows it down slow. Jungeun has always had a burning flame in her chest that yearns to reach unattainable aspirations, but if she’s honest, sometimes it is merely simplicity that she wants when she falls asleep homesick after stringent days of practice.

Standard to her is the concept of waking up early in the morning with only three hours of sleep from the night before, sharing the bathroom with eleven other girls as they hurry out of the dorm for makeup and hair, and preparing, both mentally and physically, for a full day of schedule and interviews. In the car during commutes is when they catch up on rest with Jinsol’s head tilted on her shoulder, hand curled possessively around Jungeun’s forearm even in her tired condition.

Off-periods are noisy lunches in the cafeteria before shows like Fact iN Star with the rest of Odd Eye Circle, or on the more reposed occasion, watching anime on her phone with Jinsol tucked to her side, sharing her earphones only to yank both out every time she threw her head back to bark out a laugh.

In truth, it’s galaxies better than being slumped up in a stuffy, chalk-filled classroom for insufferable hours that drags on by the second, learning about things she will never use when she’s tugging herself out of bed to the sound of screeching alarm or waiting in line at the nearest cafe for her coffee.

Jungeun is content with living in the fast lanes even if she missed a chapter or two from her school days—she was never much of a reader, anyway. She’s had this planned out in her head since the year she stepped foot in this company, foresaw the battlefield of idol life and the time it stole. She’s known for the very beginning that getting used to eleven other girls, ones she would soon consider sisters and lifelong friends, at all hours of every day is a given, that having cameras in her space like a persistent shadow chasing her every movement would be second nature.

What Jungeun didn’t formulate into the overall picture is accidentally but inevitably falling along the way with two left feet because while some people spend lifetimes looking for someone they called soulmate, Jungeun had found hers at the ripe age of seventeen.

_2._ _Nautical Twilight_

Jungeun doesn’t think it’s possible for a person’s heart to leap around in zigzags and threatening to fall right out of rib bones and tendons, but right now, at this very moment, there is no better way to describe her turbulent heartbeat as the car approaches its destination in a somewhat slow motion.

The car door slides open moments after it comes to a stop, a gush of hot air and smell of basement and tyres immediately wafting in. Jungeun steps out of the vehicle after Hyunjin, the sudden movement piquing a flush of nerves and making her two seconds away from tripping over her own shoes, were it not for a hand grabbing her arm from behind to prevent a disaster.

“Shit, Jinsol, shit, shit, _fucking shit,”_ Jungeun breathes out once she regains her balance.

“Language, and _honorifics,_ ” is all Jinsol says.

Jungeun doesn’t have enough power in her to bother about language or honorifics, not when her insides are twisting into a terrible form of catastrophe. Her legs are shaking and she can feel beads of sweat starting to take form on her forehead rolling down the sides of her face, possibly ruining the foundation she applied beforehand.

“I’m about to die,” comes Hyunjin’s voice from the front as they follow the line and enter the elevator of the venue. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this nervous before.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever felt this claustrophobic before,” Sooyoung says while she tiptoes to easily tower over the rest of them for air, a privilege that members with Jungeun’s height would never get to enjoy. With all twelve of them and their managers packed into a cramped space of the elevator, it only serves to intensify her nervousness.

They weave through the hallways with quick steps once they’re out of the suffocating elevator, greeting a few staff members along the way and stopping on their feet when an enormous white banner greets them right outside of their waiting room, the words written in thin, black ink.

_LOONAbirth - Congratulations on debuting!_

“Well shit,” Sooyoung breathes out, eyeing the gigantic piece of laminated paper up and down like she doesn’t quite believe it herself until her fingers reach out to touch the smooth lining of the printed words, flinches, and gasps like a heavy rock dropping onto her shoulders along with a sense of glaring reality that what they’ve dreaming of for so long is finally happening.

Their whispered sounds of disbelief only lasted for no more than thirty seconds before they’re all ushered into the waiting room, bags and jackets stripped off from their sweaty bodies and strewn onto the leather couch sitting by the corner of the room. The humid atmosphere around them is a tangled web of anxiety walking along a thin thread, just waiting to snap, and throbbing excitement stretched across all of their hearts into a fine line that has no ends.

As soon as the stylists start laying their artistic hands on Jungeun, she wills herself to get distracted by the makeup brushes tickling her cheeks and the lipstick smacked over her lip. It’s an easy task, surprisingly, to shift her attention away from the uneasiness settling under her skin in favour of staring at Hyunjin’s reflection, who’s staring at the mirror with wide, doelike eyes, a ridiculous antic of hers that Jungeun has yet to get used to. Somewhere in the room is Jiwoo engaging herself in an intense vocal practice for one of their lined up songs, angelic voice filling up the space and giving their ears a blessing.

Things are easy up until one of the staff members calls them out for standby, a sharp blade slicing the thread in half and unleashing an incredible burst of anxiety, and Jungeun finds her breath hitching once every few seconds as they make their way to the backstage. 

“Guys,” Haseul calls, right before they’re assigned with their respective microphones. They come in to aggregate into a circle, a habit they’d established when they know something huge is ahead of them, be it an achievement or a mishap, it’s what gives them strength for the up and coming battle. “I know all of you are probably sick to the stomach right now, and it’s okay, because being scared means you’re about to do something really brave.”

It’s a thing of wonder, really, how well Haseul knows her way around words and has never failed to soothe them right through the bones. She is a friend and a leader that carries the sky on her shoulders, and Jungeun couldn’t be more thankful.

“So enjoy tonight to the fullest.”

They’re waited on standby at a corner where the fans can’t see them, but when Jungeun stretches her neck out enough, she can catch a glimpse of the stadium seats lined up in a disciplined order, each and every one of them occupied. They have fluorescent boards held up over their heads—some have individual member’s name on them, some have them as a whole, some have giant hearts and _I love you’s_ slapped over the surface.

Their eyes shine with anticipation and hope, and briefly, Jungeun thinks they look like stars, the same ones that had gotten her falling deep into a place where dreams are made true and wishes are granted. Maybe tonight is the night, where she can finally—after literal years of waiting— _finally,_ touch them.

“Are you seeing this?” Jungeun says, voice shaky and barely a whisper, like she can’t bring herself to believe her own eyes just yet, not until she can feel it at her fingertips.

Beside her is Jinsol, stagnant and silent. Jungeun turns to look at her and catches a glint of tears at the corner of her eyes—she isn’t crying, not exactly, instead, it looks a lot like she’s refusing to blink, refusing to close her eyes even for one split second in fear that once she opens her eyes again, everything will get pulled under the currents and disappear, like a nightmare meeting the first ray of the morning sun. 

The staff standing beside the stairs gestures them a cue for them to proceed towards the stage, and each step they take feels like a flower petal blooming into life, twelve pieces of equal parts assembling into one and just waiting to conquer the entire world. There aren’t doves flying above their heads, or fireworks setting off behind them like a happy ending in a cliche romance movie, but they don’t need them, because stargazing with twelve pairs of hands clasped together into a promise is already an enchanted tale.

Jungeun is taking the first step up the stairs, footstep heavy against the smooth marble when Jinsol tugs her at her arm and gives it a light squeeze, fingernails digging gently into her skin, laughing nervously while she says, “Shit, Jungeun.”

-

Jinsol has never understood the concept of personal space.

Jungeun knows this best, especially now being in the corner of the studio with Jinsol attached diligently at her hip from a seated position in two separate plastic chairs that are tangled in a mess of steel legs. 

Once again has Jinsol found a way to defy all structural boundaries of furniture architecture and squeezes her way right into Jungeun’s bubble, until it’s hard to distinguish whose thigh is whose, a pointy elbow resting precariously on her shoulder and filling all the gaps that separate them with syrupy wafts of perfume and muffled laughter caught in her chest when Jinsol finds hilarity at the most inappropriate of times. But Jinsol’s leech of a person is familiar and ample amounts more forgiving compared to the hardcore grinding of dance routines this late into the night.

“Why are you two slacking off?” Sooyoung hollers at them from across the room, an accusing finger pointing their way.

“Hyejoo’s playing video games, why don’t you lecture her instead?” Jinsol counters, but not at all offended. 

“It’s called taking a break,” Hyejoo’s voice echoes somewhere from the pile of jackets and bags, her figure buried in layers of clothes stacked one on top of another.

Late night practices often include some occasional slacking off because of jittering bones and aching bodies, while Sooyoung branches off from the normal and is always practicing with or without them. What isn’t normal, though, is Jinsol’s body pressed up against hers even amidst their damp, sweat-soaked shirt sticking obnoxiously onto their skin, and it’s so disgustingly uncomfortable that Haseul tells them exactly that.

“Please get off each other, I’m already sweaty enough and seeing you two practically merging into one piece makes it ten times worse.” 

Jungeun’s all gross and ungraceful with only rosy fragrance of perfume covering the stench of sweat, but Jinsol doesn’t seem to mind all that much, and she does the exact opposite of Haseul’s request.

The first thing Jungeun’s frenzied mind manifests is the way Jinsol’s body heat is suddenly blanketed around her and leaning too close for polite comfort—she can tell because there’s breath tickling at her nape and wisping down her spine. The arm thrown around her shoulders is a little too chummy and wills the flinch out of her system, replacing it with a disgustingly warm bashfulness that engulfs her from the head down that she blindly blames on her choice of clothing layers and poorly maintained heating systems. 

What gets her is the way Jinsol pulls in closer, tucks right over her shoulder and lands a butterfly kiss smack dab on her ear that renders her still because she can’t even be entirely sure if it was a kiss or a figment of her vigorous imagination. The sudden blast of Girl’s Generation’s _Gee_ knocks her back to her senses, as does Jinsol’s shrill scream from her approval at the great choice of music.

The peck that everyone had surely witnessed is forgotten much too soon in favour of resuming practice, and Jungeun is left to pretend like she isn’t equal parts confused as she is flustered and plays along throughout the rest of the routine. But as soon as dance practice ends, the confusion ebbs persistently at her cluttered mind like a probing needle, vexing her until she’s staring moon-sized eyes at Jinsol without even realizing it.

“You’re staring again,” Jinsol nudges at her side, fingers uncapping the bottle of water in hand and taking big gulps right after.

“I was spacing out,” Jungeun easily brushes off, which gets a shrug on Jinsol’s shoulders in response.

Later, when the members are slowly disappearing from the studio one by one, Jungeun confronts Haseul in the small practice room right around the corner, slipping in with difficult stealth before Jiwoo could catch her in the act from her peripheral and prance after her like a jubilant little puppy tugging at her limbs, giving Jungeun no space to settle.

“I think Jinsol kissed my ear back there,” Jungeun says when she’s inside, feigning nonchalance as she sits against the wall and watches Haseul shuffle through her iPod indecisively. Haseul is an inherent hard worker with a bountiful storage of passion built up inside her for music, and Jungeun could only wish she would one day possess even half of her ambitions.

Unfortunately for her, and albeit shamefully, her highest point of motivation is only ever when food is involved and rarely from her own will.

“Oh, she did,” Haseul confirmed with a rivaling coolness, as if they are talking about the weather. “You weren’t imagining it.”

“Why didn’t you guys say anything?”

“Because _Jung Jinsol,_ that’s why,” Haseul snickers fondly, shuffling through a medley of songs ranging from Daniel Caesar to Giveon, all of which are choices Jungeun does not mind. The song she stops on rattles the walls against her back like a simulated earthquake, threatening to shake the walls down in rhythmic pulses at a time. “Did you come in here just to ask me about that, or did you come in here because you love me so much you want to watch me practice?”

“Neither,” Jungeun lies. “Why would I want to waste my time like that.”

“You little shit,” Haseul’s frown is anything but menacing. “What brings you here, then?”

“Practice, maybe,” Jungeun shrugs, feels her voice vibrating as it cuts through the sound waves of english metering. “Or free dinner for sitting through _your_ practice?”

“You’re not just a little shit, you're _infuriating_ ,” Haseul says, her hand grabbing a mic that was sitting on the table. 

“I know,” Jungeun teases, and Haseul looks about ready to chuck her water bottle at her face to smack the expression right off. “Unnie, I’m kidding. I’ll pay this time if you want.”

“What kind of unnie would ever let the younger ones pay,” Haseul sighs. “Anyway, make yourself useful and record me sing, will you?”

Jungeun reaches out to snatch the phone from Haseul’s outstretched hand and slides it open to the crisp camera. There’s a blurry picture of her and Jinsol in the preview, the small icon revealing Jinsol’s goofy smile as she pressed the side of her face flush against Haseul’s, and Jungeun can’t help but let her mind wander back from where it had digressed.

“You think Jinsol has always been like this?” Jungeun asks, mostly as an afterthought. “Affectionate, touchy and stuff.”

“Yeah,” Haseul says without missing a beat, a reminiscent grin stretching across her lips. “Definitely. Jinsol was always hanging around my shoulders since the very beginning, when I was still a really shy high schooler.”

“You still look like a shy high schooler.”

“Kim Jungeun, just because you’re two centimetres taller than me does not mean you can verbally harass me like that.”

Jungeun laughs at Haseul’s easily peeved temper until it fades into something softer. “She’s always doing stuff like that with us—cuddling when we’re trying to sleep, holding our hands while waiting for monthly evaluation, _kissing our ears_ during practice.”

Jungeun frowns pointedly and slides further down the wall, the back of her head colliding against it with her arms resting over bent knees. She twirls Haseul’s phone between her fingers and marvels at the pristine, unshattered screen.

Haseul, with two hands resting on her knee much like Jungeun, looks strangely contemplative.

“Actually, Jungeun,” Haseul says, and her words sound impossibly louder than the music shaking deep within her bones. “Jinsol’s only like that with you.”

These words, Jungeun never quite forgets.

-

Everything shifts from all-too-familiar to hyperawareness in the breath of moment, and Jungeun is afraid she can’t keep up.

Jinsol’s arms on her shoulders and the fingers around her wrist seem to burn beyond the surface of her skin now, a raging fire simmering somewhere near the ridges of her left rib cage that doesn’t ever quite go away even if she drowns it out with water and artistic distractions. 

But Jungeun doesn’t do stress, it’s simply not worth her time. Sure, living in a tiny apartment with eleven other girls had its downsides if she dwells on it long enough to consider the cons, and maybe she isn’t as proficient at Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds as Yerim and Hyejoo are, but Jungeun doesn’t stress over matters if she knows she can help it. It’s a contradiction, really, because Jungeun is determined, and she’s never left room to give herself the benefit of the doubt.

A bigger, more flawed part of her wants to shed all the blame on Haseul for inputting words to the ambiguous tightening in her chest, the one that she’d learned to brush off all these years whenever Jinsol so much as beamed with the tiniest upturning of her lips. Haseul had nailed it right on the head where Jungeun wished she’d missed by a longshot because maybe then, the weight she bears on her chest and shoulders won’t feel so unbearably pressuring if she can distribute the blame with someone else.

But the slight reassurance of it not being her fault, not entirely, relieves her more than she’s willing to morally accept, even if the end of each day pointedly reminds her that she’s still the only one to blame.

With the conversation from the other night heavy in the air like thick condensation, Jungeun feels her convoluted emotions surface from the depths of her murky mind, full and clear-set now as it skirts on the edges of her sanity like a licking candle flame, rendering her into a mess of scattered thoughts. It keeps her wide awake on nights where even the sensitive exhaustion in her muscles can’t lull her to sleep, forcing her to give up on the power naps she would milk during post-promotion schedules and reaching an all-time high with her irascible behaviour that even Jiwoo has stopped bothering to cheer her up.

It’ll bleed into her work if this keeps up, and Jungeun is all too aware of the drawbacks this will incite if she allows it.

Instead of letting her thoughts get the best of her, Jungeun does the most logical thing she can think of, which really, is just logical intuition, and steers clear of the shaded path in fear that she’ll stumble and fall with bruised knees. She forces herself to ignore the storm brewing grey clouds inside of her because Jungeun has always evaded the unknown and dodges the entire ordeal as the weeks flit by because at least this, she understands. After all, she’s been emotionally doing it for more than two years, a skill perfected to her heart’s advantage. It’s what she does best because Kim Jungeun does not deal with shit that makes no sense.

She occupies most of the following weeks avoiding all things Jinsol and anything that so remotely reminds her of her infectious existence. Jinsol is the source of her equivocal problem that Jungeun wants to bury back down into the very depths of her hardened skull, so it’s only natural that she prefers turning a blind eye instead of swallowing down the pill. 

But things never work out that easily, and she’s long since learned that with every road came a bump, some rougher than the others. Granted, she hadn’t anticipated the effort needed to actually avoid Jinsol, a constant that Jungeun works and lives with for twenty three hours of the day, give or take the amount of sleep gifted each night.

She needs to get into the right headspace, the one just above her heart and filled with a bit more positivity because there is also the slight off-chance that the feelings would dissipate on their own accord, like a temporary and underdeveloped phase that’s never meant to be real in the first place—nothing beyond mere experimental curiosity, she’s decided, like trespassing an inaccessible gateway at the very corner of her mind.

With this implanted firmly into the dirt of her mind, Jungeun starts spending more time in the comforts of yyxy’s shared room after schedules, huddled over her phone with headphones in place, and other times, with Sooyoung in the practice room polishing up choreography covers of the latest routines.

In retrospect, she had spent more time in her own company than she did with the members, and the realization that she only ever crawled out of her comfort zone all these years because of Jinsol’s persistence until it, in fact, became _comfortable,_ crashes into her like a violent epiphany. 

There’s a strange tug that wallows its way into her chest when she stops offering to join Jinsol on her trips to the company building or when she rigidly rejects her suggestions to watch the newest show on netflix together, and it’s an awful kind of gaping that yanked her inside-out, stirring her from her sleep on subsequent nights with a cold sweat staining her body and unstable breathing conquering her lungs.

Jinsol naturally catches on to the sudden change in attitude early but only really acknowledges it when dance practices take place. The blank expressions aimed her way through the foggy mirrors of the studio are obvious if not self-evident, something that used to be so distinctly Jinsol now uncharacteristically offbeat each time Sooyoung pauses the track to individually clean up Kahei and Yeojin’s movements. Jungeun doesn’t meet her eyes for once, not when Jinsol’s glancing at her on high alert.

But the dull ache in her chest is comforting, rather, in that reverse psychology kind of way and helps keep her in place from crawling back to Jinsol—she hated depending on others anyway and ignorantly convinces herself that the lump in her throat is pleasant even if it is anything but, leaving a sour taste in her mouth like the pit of a peach lodged deep within her windpipe to obstruct the guilt from uprising.

Had it been any other day in life, Jungeun would collapse on the floor in a sweaty heap beside Jinsol during the breaks while they idly browsed their phones in front of the buzzing electric fan or sit in relative silence to catch their breaths. But tonight is the exception and holds the weight of the unfamiliar first time as Jungeun paces up to the opposite end of the studio, ignoring the way Jinsol’s eyes follow her the entire way in the mirror’s hazy reflection. 

But Jinsol is persistent, Jungeun knows this and always has, and in the next few seconds, Jinsol stands from her place on the ground, jogs over to Jungeun, and collapses to the floor beside her with the rubber of her shoes squeaking on the polishes floors.

“Hey, Lip, did you listen to Ariana Grande’s new song?” Jinsol asks with something that sounds like feigned nonchalance and falls on her side right on Jungeun’s lap, silky hair persistently sticking to her forehead with sweat. Jungeun wants to pull away with a lame excuse. “It’s totally your style.”

It’s not to say that nothing had explicitly changed between them on the surface level, and Jungeun, although unhealthy, likes to think of it as masking her internal conflicts in a way that could slide by unnoticed, incognito from the members’ eyes because she’s never keen on allowing her problems to become a burden for others to fret over. And like most adversities, Jungeun deals with them in an offhand manner as such, letting them wash over untouched rather than tackling them head-on.

“Yeah,” Jungeun says calmly like it should be obvious. “Yerim was blasting it in our van this morning.”

It’s nice, the thought of Jinsol thinking of her while listening to music. It softens the edges to her voice, and she coughs to harden her composure back to one devoid of vulnerability when Jinsol glances up at her. But at the back of her mind, she’s thinking about how good it makes her feel, knowing that trivial things throughout Jinsol’s day reminds her of Jungeun, the littlest of details that she associates to this person from so many years of being together and learning about each other’s inner and outer workings. 

Jungeun lets the thrumming in her heart slide just this once, and maybe her last.

“Why am I not surprised,” Jinsol scoffs, but there’s a teasing laughter in her tone. “Yerim would probably kill to see her in person.”

“And you would probably take a bullet for The Weekend if you could, so you’re one to talk,” Jungeun retorts, scrolling through twitter to ignore the warmth of Jinsol’s head pressed flush against her thigh. She lowers her phone and shoves at Jinsol’s shoulder. “Hey, get off, it’s way too hot for this.”

Jinsol pushes off and leans her back against the wall, The way her eyes are lowered to her lap looks nothing but disorganized even through the innocence of her pout and, if Jungeun allows herself a few more seconds to stare from her peripheral, hurt. She trains her gaze back on her phone when Jinsol shifts to look at her, scrolling rapidly past the slew of fantaken photos from someone called _Trust Issues_ and pretends to take interest in the news headlines and music chart rankings. Something about Red Velvet’s upcoming comeback and more rumors about idols she’s only ever seen in passing, which, she’s learned, were never true anyway.

She’s swept up in useless thoughts about their lousy diet and her mom’s cooking when Jinsol reaches through her buzzing mind to wrap long fingers around her wrist to get her attention where she’d lost it. Jungeun swallows hard, tenses her jaw and almost lets her phone slip from her fingers at the last second.

“Did I do something wrong?”

The words aren’t unexpected, not really, more of an intuitive premonition she’d prepared for since her descent into the abyss. Jungeun has been anticipating these exact words since the day she consciously decided to walk in the opposite direction of Jinsol, pretending she didn’t catch a glimpse of Jinsol’s questioning frown, or when she avoided eye contact with her in favour of idly chatting with Heejin. 

But actually hearing it hang thick in the air around them is everything she hadn’t prepared for, the way Jinsol says each word like she’s afraid something will shatter in the void between them, the way Jungeun almost hears the cracking in her chest, tangible and loud when Jinsol’s grip tightens then slackens in defeat. It hits her hard and throws her off-kilter, derailing her from the clear path she’d set out to follow, if only for a brief moment in time because Sooyoung decides just then to call them back to the mirror.

Jinsol doesn’t look away even when Sooyoung’s voice rings through the room, but her grip falters even more until she’s hanging by a thread, and Jungeun takes that vulnerable chance to retract her arm, setting her phone off to the side and standing on sore feet to pull away from Jinsol completely for the first time in years. 

Jungeun glances down, mouth slightly ajar and brows twisted with lost words stuck in her throat. Her hands itch to intertwine her fingers with Jinsol’s in a gesture of reassurance, but she fights every muscle in her body not to. She’s already buried underwater from the feet up, and she can’t handle another wave to sink her deeper.

“No? I’ve just been really tired lately, sorry,” Jungeun adds because at least half of the sentence doesn’t make her feel like a dirty liar. The slight ounce of honesty feels better than none, and she’ll take what she can get without giving too much away because honesty and talk are scarce these days. She forces a smile through her teeth. “Let’s get back to practice.”

Jinsol shrugs, but the weight of _something_ still sits on her shoulders that Jungeun can’t see through the material of her sweater. “Okay.”

Nothing in the slightest is settled between them, not even the exchange of eye contact from opposite ends of the room, but Jungeun knows she’ll have to get used to these open endings, to closure that isn’t really closure but a make-believe turnout she’d surmised on her own.

She spends the rest of practice working until she’s drenched in sticky sweat because maybe then, the salt will wash away the feeling of Jinsol’s fingers wrapped loose around her wrist, like the string of a balloon tugging her towards the warmth of Jinsol’s sun-kissed smiles until she’s settled on cloud nine.

But when she lays down that night with a pillow suffocating her face, she realizes today’s ending might have been the coldest of them all, her first step in relearning that sunshine belongs to the sky and not in the curve of a smile.

-

A curious, almost regretful thing about society is how it teaches Jungeun that love is hard but never that the realization is harder.

Something had always been there for Jinsol, even if the realization wasn’t. Jungeun has only ever come close to loving in the form of the tranquility Cheongju’s parks offer, just a short ten minute walk from her house where she’d wrap herself up in the warmth of the grass and the tender breeze kissing at her cheeks under the vastness of transparent cerulean. 

As a child, she’d fallen for the yellows leaves that couldn’t hold on strong enough, eventually coming off the stem and flowing along the direction of the wind—the wind that ran through her hair like the gentle hands of lovers that most people come to understand, that is, until Jinsol entered her life in a blur of monotone spontaneity, bad ideas and even worse decisions that Jungeun never learned how to refuse, not even once. She’s always known that Jinsol made the homesick home- _bearable,_ replacing the greens and breeze with slender fingers of her own that soothed comforting circles against her ears when she needed it most, or hands that tousled her hair playfully in a way that said _I adore you._

Things were easier back then, and a part of her wishes time would turn back to the days she didn’t question the kicking of rabbit feet against her heart.

“Kim Jungeun, I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

An arm slings around her shoulders with a tender roughness that can only be identified as one Kim Jiwoo with slim muscles and boney forearms, who possesses a face as kind as the ripple of first rain in spring, the kind with an unbridled amity and devotion for the people around her that it leaves a gaping hole in Jungeun’s confidence the size of a large fist.

Jungeun is leaning against a wall of gifts from the fans, a barrier, of sorts, stacked precariously at the back of the office that staff would sort through later. There’s a shoe box digging uncomfortably against her spine that she has long since ignored in favour of stretching her legs out to ease the needles prickling the bottom of her sleeping feet from the awkward angle. 

Somewhere off to the side, she eyes a box addressed to _Jinsoul Unnie,_ a brand name gift from a company that Jungeun knows Jinsol will be ecstatic to own, maybe an oversized sweater that she’ll shred to pieces by the blades of a merciless pair of scissors. Everything is Jinsol, but nothing feels all right.

Jungeun can’t pinpoint when she started occupying so much of her offtime in hidden corners and away from prodding eyes that reminds her too much of cameras, but it gets tiring, she’ll admit, pretending as though pain doesn’t fester through her like a primal fire when she shrugs Jinsol off her side with emotionless eyes or when she sits at the farthest end of the table or couch to deflect heat from her body. She’ll take every inch she can get if it means suppressing the urges to breathe Jinsol into her lungs and inhale all of her love to chase out the insecurity and selfishness. 

It is exactly what she cannot succumb to.

“Interesting choice of hideaway,” Jiwoo voices, glancing around with a doubtful gaze as she wedges herself in the nook between the wall of gifts and Jungeun. “What are you doing here anyway? It smells like paper bags, gel pens, and five different types of fancy perfume.”

“I’m not hiding,” Jungeun grumbles, sitting up straighter to make the cramped space doable because Jiwoo has dumbass tendencies and does things like squish herself into places not meant for two. “I just needed a little bit of quiet.”

“Trust me, there are plenty more favorable crannies in this building to stuff yourself into. You and Jinsol are so _singular,”_ Jiwoo leans her head back against the foot of a teddy bear, and Jungeun’s heart jumps at the mention of Jinsol’s name. “She likes sleeping in cramped spaces, don’t you guys like space? And, I don’t know, _breathing?”_

Space. Jungeun most definitely likes her space, and for one thing, she’d really like some right about now because they’re practically touching cheeks, and she can feel the ridges of Jiwoo’s rib cage fitting against her own. On the other hand, what she actually wants doesn’t concern Jiwoo invading her bubble, but for the space between her and Jinsol to get easier, less aching and more emotionally compensating. It takes twenty eight days to break a habit, and Jungeun holds onto hope with a viselike grip.

“It’s comforting being crammed up like this,” Jungeun admits, resting her head back against Jiwoo’s arm. “Everything just gets so big as we gain popularity that I forgot how small home was back in Cheongju.”

Jiwoo hums thoughtfully in the way that she does when she grapples the austerity beneath a situation but refrains from stroking the fire. Jungeun has always appreciated the ease that comes with confiding in someone like Jiwoo—Jiwoo has undoubtedly always been the one to pull everyone through thick and thin with an outstretched hand and unfaltered smile, sometimes even more so than Haseul, who is their pillar of support and starkly wiser in comparison.

“I’m not too sure about that, our dorm is pretty small,” Jiwoo jokes in an attempt to lighten the mood that had somehow grown taut with tension in the span of a few seconds. There’s a long pause that proceeds Jungeun’s snort, and Jungeun braces herself for what comes next, the anteceding words at the tip of Jiwoo’s tongue already threatening to snap the thick tension loose.

“I told Jinsol to fetch you earlier for practice. She said she’d rather not and didn’t bother to elaborate. Care to explain what that’s all about?”

“Oh,” is all Jungeun manages and pretends like this isn’t her fault. “We’ve just both been really stressed about work, I guess.”

“Why would that have anything to do with Jinsol not wanting to get you?”

“Because,” Jungeun says, masking the cryptic words with chilly nonchalance. “Because I’m stressed, and she’d rather not.”

Jiwoo frowns, eyebrows twisting together. “Right.”

She says, “Yeah.”

The silence that engulfs them is icy and oppressive, but Jiwoo doesn’t push the issue any further than she already has like she usually does, and Jungeun is thankful.

“We’re five minutes late to practice and five minutes closer to getting our ass kicked,” Jiwoo finally says, extracting herself from Jungeun’s side and standing up to the clearing to stretch. “Enough hiding.”

Jungeun nods and lets Jiwoo drag her by the wrist back to the studio.

If only it was that easy.

-

If the realization won’t break her, then the song will.

It’s becoming more and more evident with each passing day that the churning of Jungeun’s stomach will not go away any time soon than she’d like it to, to the point where Jinsol so much breathing out a gush of air or simply humming inaudibly to the lines of a song are enough vehemence to send a deafening tinnitus into Jungeun’s ears.

There is a faint white noise at the back of her head following her everywhere she goes, a noise that gets magnified tenfold when Jinsol is anywhere within her vicinity, dangerous and alarming like cotton on flames. It’s so terribly loud that Jungeun is no longer able to tune them out with songs of her choice, but she learns a few heartbeats too late that the song itself is never really the same anymore, not when there are trails of nostalgia and Jinsol’s chef-kissed voice dragging all the way to the four minute mark.

Jungeun has always appreciated the way the complexity of feelings and emotions can be easily wrapped up in one song, its artistic perception of certain things poking on Jungeun’s skin and settling deep into the archives of her values like it’s _right_ there with her. It is exactly this fervorous touch of consciousness that had come so close to breaking her on stage because of the intimacy she attaches herself to music—Love Letter no longer sounds like a love letter anymore. Instead, it sounds more like a cry of help that only ever echoes forward and not backwards, sounds like Jungeun pouring her heart out only for it to be stepped on and ripped apart by the very same person that holds it in between her palms.

But at the end of the day, it all comes down to only one realization which is the painful fact that she is her own biggest enemy, and that the throbbing ache of her heart is only there because she’d inflicted it upon herself, flinging her own heart onto the spot right where Jinsol stands and throwing away all the memories and euphoria it holds in hopes that it would just stop blooming into a bed of flowers in her chest because some flowers are born with thorns.

Jungeun can feel every single word she sings into the mic, can hear the heartbreak that Love Letter portrays getting progressively louder in the tiny earpiece tucked into her ear, and she’s got half a mind to just pull it out entirely so that the sound of the crowd can flood over the white noise that has been constantly buzzing in her head ever since she came to understand how easy it is to fall, and that crawling back up is simply impossible when it comes to someone like Jinsol.

She finishes up the stage with a mask of professionalism that is automatically nailed into her whenever she is under the prime focus of cameras and fans, emotionless, if she had to give it a name, something she’d learned along the journey of pursuing this particular career which tolerates zero vulnerability. But when the spotlight dims and the cheers of fans fade away as she proceeds backstage is when her cover crumbles into a pile of hot mess right under her chest, and she finds smiling even in the slightest bit a lot harder than it should be.

But she gets through it, and this may be the very first time that Jungeun finds herself being thankful for the hasty atmosphere of the waiting room filled with rapid footsteps of staff members and stylist, a sense of urgency that leaves Jungeun no room for distracting thoughts as she instantaneously sits on the salon chair the moment she enters the room for preparation of the next stage. 

She is, however, among the chaos and loud chatters, awfully aware of Jinsol’s eyes trained on her at opportune times when they’re both sat side by side with makeup brushes swiping over their cheeks and combs pulling at their scalp. But before any words are put into action, they’re called out on standby once again, her body merging with the others as they make their way to the stage.

The concert is a successful one, but only to a certain extent because Hyunjin couldn’t find Yeojin’s hand where it’s supposed to be, and Jungeun could see an empty spot in front of her in the middle of their choreography which belongs to Sooyoung, their acute absence driving a hole into all of their hearts more so than Yeojin’s sprained ankle and Sooyoung’s broken nose that had carelessly happened the day before.

Predictably, they end up crying, all of them—well, except Hyejoo, an aloofness, of sorts, that Jungeun soon comes to discover as strong will instead of a cold heart. Sooyoung is the one to induce the sea of tears, feeling incredibly sorry that she couldn’t perform for the fans and Yeojin standing at the side muttering apologies over apologies for causing Sooyoung’s broken nose and the overall inconvenience.

Jungeun was originally determined to not cry, because one drop of tear means a whole cascade of emotions which is a mix of insecurities and gratitude for the stars that are hanging in the sky to watch them tonight, but hearing Jinsol’s voice crack in such a way that is raw and miserable sends a wave of tears rolling off her cheeks almost immediately, completely unstoppable as Jinsol reminisces the hardships they had to put through for this.

Her legs itch to run over to Jinsol to pull her into a hug and to whisper a series of _it’s okay’s_ into her ear so that her cries would stop slicing through Jungeun’s heart like the song had done so mercilessly to her. But she doesn’t, her feet are glued to the ground because she knows all of her carefully constructed resolve would dissipate into thin air the moment she melts into Jinsol’s embrace like how it did every single time since day one.

The tears don’t stop even after they’d said a million _thank you’s_ and bid their goodbyes to the fans, the twelve of them crammed up in a space backstage where they give each other the much needed reassurance and comfort. Jiwoo cries earnestly like a child who dropped her ice cream when Sooyoung says _don’t cry,_ the two magic words that work reversely with its original means, and Jungeun watches the scene unfold, so immersed in endearment that she doesn’t notice a hand tugging on the sleeves of her shirt until it comes fully to intertwine with her fingers.

A hand dabs at her wet cheeks when she turns around to meet eyes with Jinsol, who is smiling through her tears with so much love and joy that for a moment, Jungeun basks in the gratifying feeling of Jinsol’s delicate fingers wiping away her tears, like a touch of heaven that grounds her on her spot, identical to the way their palms had collided for the first time years ago.

Jungeun reverts her eyes away to meet the concrete below their feet, and one of Jinsol’s hands is still there to catch fresh tears streaming along the lines of her cheek, while the other remains clasped with Jungeun’s as if it’s saying, _we're okay._

The stars are bright tonight, but the sun forgets to shine the next day, and the song playing in Jungeun’s head is a broken melody that even waves of the sea can’t wash away.

-

There are two sides to Jung Jinsol, and Jungeun has fallen in love with the both of them.

It’s a lot like falling in love with a brewing hurricane, she thinks, a whirlpool of emotions built up in someone who doesn’t know the difference between insomnia and being nocturnal, the first sign of a fever from the first sign of flattery. Jinsol on stageand Jinsol off camera are entirely disparate yet exactly one in the same, and some days she finds the line that distinguishes the two blurring into an almost indecipherable haze that makes Jungeun feel dirty for falling in love twice.

If she recalls all the years she’d spent watching Jinsol out of the corners of her eyes, through the pixelated chromatic of large screens, or just mere inches in front of her, her heart had capsized for the girl printed behind a squared picture before the actual Jung Jinsol. 

Granted, it was only because curiosity had gotten the best of her when she intrusively decided to snoop at Jinsol’s profile, the same day she was called down to the office to sign her contract under Blockberry Creative. The folder had been laying in front of her and appropriately labeled “Jinsoul” when the assistant excused himself to grab some paperwork next door—temptation in the form of manila, too enticing to not indulge in.

She’d spent a few seconds too long scrutinizing the square profile photo at the top left corner to really catch any remarkable details before the doorknob was already rattling her out of her daze, fingers moving to shut the folder as she sat back in her chair with a first impression already set in mind. Yet since the day she got to know Jinsol past an alias and a thumbnail in a pressed office folder, Jungeun had decided that she much preferred the docile counterpart to the fierce one.

There was Jinsoul, one of LOONA’s visuals and vocal in charge of charisma, the pretty girl with long, fluttering eyelashes, coy smolder, and voice as deep as the Pacific that made people all around the country swoon backwards to fan their burning faces down. Jungeun had spent more nights than she can count huddled under her covers with little oxygen, watching Jinsoul-focused fancams one after another on her phone only to discover that even she couldn’t escape the blush spreading high on her cheekbones from the intense gaze and perfect jawline, a persona that had gotten Jungeun so mesmerized.

She’d been in the middle of rewinding the video back to Jinsol’s part in _Butterfly_ when the covers were abruptly yanked off her head to reveal a very disgruntled, very exhausted Kahei, who was unmistakably the lightest sleeper Jungeun had ever come to know. Not even a mouse could crawl by without disturbing her sleep, and although Kahei was the image of hope in everyone’s bad days, she was ironically a grinch of a sleeper with cranky tendencies to lash out at anyone who so much as grazed her buttons. She was not one to reckon with when angry, and Jungeun has since avoided being on the receiving end of her distemper.

“Do you really have to monitor our performances at two in the morning?” Kahei had whisper-groaned, dropping the covers back over Jungeun and padding back to her bed. “I thought fans were cheering outside our door because your earphones are so loud.”

“Sorry, unnie,” Jungeun had whispered back apologetically, tugging her earphones out and tucking her phone far under her pillow before anyone could find out that no, she was not monitoring anything but the attractive expression on Jinsol’s face every time the camera captured her.

But behind the confidence and well-constructed demeanor is Jung Jinsol, sweet and delicate Jung Jinsol that spent more time cuddled against people’s sides than she did in her own bed. Jinsol is innocent and holds the stars in her eyes when she looks at the world around her with a gleam of warmth, something Jungeun had become accustomed to every time Jinsol directs that glance at her with twinkling eyes even in the most starless of nights.

She has her flaws, blotchy, red blemishes that appeared on her face whenever they went days without sleeping, shaggy hair and lanky limbs that were entirely ungraceful but was everything if not perfect. This is the Jinsol that likes mathematics and pats on the head to know she’d done well. Jungeun can’t quite picture a life where Jinsol’s laugh doesn’t waft through the wind chimes or sing the world into a stunned silence.

“What’s Jinsoul’s best trait?” She’d been asked once, and it’s such an unconventional question that Jungeun almost scoffs because it’s near impossible, really, to choose just one thing about someone who is made up of an endless assortment of favourites that can never be surmounted into one. It had taken a beat too long for Jungeun to construct her answer, but she’d played it off smoothly enough without making the pause suspicious and smiles like she has no intention of it ever faltering.

“She’s warm,” Jungeun responds, but she knows she means the girl behind the cameras, the girl whose smile rivals the sun.

-

Three in the morning finds Jungeun perched against the kitchen counter, nursing a cool cup of milk against her cheek to ease the train wreck in her mind. 

Sleep does not come as easy as she’d anticipated after cutting more of Jinsol out of her everyday routine, but neither does the chokehold grasp around her heart that tightens whenever she pretends like Jinsol doesn’t notice her off-putting behaviour with disconcerted eyes. 

It’s mentally addling, playing this game of hide and seek, but Jungeun has never been keen on losing, and she’s determined to push this far away until things revert to what they used to be, when the question of _love_ was merely rhetorical instead of unanswered.

There’s a half-eaten bowl of noodles sitting on the table, chopsticks balancing carelessly over the top and threatening to fall with a clatter on the table—Hyunjin, probably, from the looks of the mess she’d left behind. She must have had another late night craving after staying up to play video games with Hyejoo and Yerim. 

Jungeun can only question Hyunjin’s inability to clean up after herself and scoffs aloud into the blank void because even Chaewon, who has a knack for innocently forgetting about these types of things, had the decency to clean her area after every meal. Kahei will nag her come morning, and Yerim would probably take the blame. The thought traces a nostalgic smile on her face, and she brings the cup to her mouth to chug down the rest of the milk in one breath.

“Can’t sleep?”

Jungeun jerks her gaze towards the voice emitting somewhere near the door to the bedroom and faintly hears the door click shut. The familiar outline of Jinsol’s frame emerges from the darkness, hair unkempt and tousled from vigorous dreams and face swollen with exhaustion, and Jungeun wills the jittery nerves that rattle her skin away until a numbness masks everything underneath. She trains her eyes on the balancing chopsticks.

“Yeah,” Jungeun mutters, setting her cup down. She’s gotten so used to reciting white lies that she worries the filter might never go away. “I guess I’m just nervous about the upcoming shows and concerts.”

“That’s not until another month though,” Jinsol pads across the kitchen on bare feet and grabs an empty cup from the cupboard. She turns the faucet on to a slow drizzle, fills it halfway only to down it all in one shot, and leans against the sink across from her. Jungeun hopes her remark has more curiosity than it does dubiety. 

“I get nervous all the time,” Jungeun says. “Not that I show it a lot these days, at least.”

“You don’t really show anything.”

Jungeun shuts her mouth. The words float heavy between them and shake the stillness with a dynamic tension, a fist crawling up her throat that makes it hard for oxygen to reach her lungs and a coherent response to formulate in her beclouded mind. 

It’s the first time she’s properly looked at Jinsol in weeks, but she’s no less breakable in that delicate way only Jungeun can pull off, even if there’s the grey patch of sleeping bags lining the bottom of her eyes that wasn’t there that night in the studio, and strands of hair that drape low in her eyes that make Jungeun itch to brush away.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jungeun asks defensively, feigning oblivion. But she has no right to be defensive when it’s exactly her intention to hide away the feelings.

Jinsol sighs with so much force her shoulders slump with fatigue, hand coming up to comb her hair back and relieving Jungeun of the urge. She looks like a worn soul wrung out of all its energy, a lightbulb just waiting to flicker off, and Jungeun wants nothing more than to apologize for falling in love with her.

“Nothing,” Jinsol finally mutters softly, jaded as she drops her hand at her side and pushes away from the counter to leave dejectedly, confused, everything Jungeun is feeling too, but entirely unaware. “It’s nothing.”

Jungeun’s hand seems to have a mind of its own because in one instant, she’s picking her bleeding heart up from the floor, and in the next, she’s trying hard to swallow it down as she reaches out to grab Jinsol’s wrist with cold fingers to tug her back, the fear of losing everything rising high in her throat as the shock of warmth and the stuttering pulse washes shivers down each knob of her spine.

“Don’t—” she says, but Jungeun has always had a problem with timing.

Jinsol’s wrist is already in her grasp, tangible and fracturing. The force of the pull is laden with so much raw desperation to keep her from leaving that it paints astonishment on Jinsol’s face only inches from her own when she stumbles backwards to brace a palm against the flat of Jungeun’s chest, steadying herself upright.

It’s not the first time they’re breathing the same air, but something about Jinsol’s parted lips and drained eyes has her leaning in close until she’s filling her lungs full of Jinsol’s shaky exhales. Jinsol’s breath gets lost in her throat when Jungeun tilts her head forward, a moment lost in time where her mind draws blanks with the light humming of the heater in the background to encompass the space with white noise where she sees nothing but black and white.

Jinsol’s breath tastes like the ocean and a cosmic explosion behind her eyelids. They don’t kiss, but it’s so close to becoming one that her mind goes reeling, but just as fast as it happens, Jungeun steps back with twice the speed and coughs once, hard enough for her throat to feel raw.

And Jinsol, as expected from the turn of events, looks more confused than ever, eyebrows threading together as she registers what had transpired with a scathing realization, the almost-kiss that Jungeun had initiated out of sheer spontaneity sprung on by her own conflicting emotions. 

Jungeun wants to run from this until her lungs collapse because she might have shattered all salvation and blown her cover, unveiling more than she had ever intended with a crack in her facade that she’s spent so long building only to have it crashing down in the spur of a moment. The way Jinsol’s mouth is still hanging ajar, words and questions and confirmation heavy on the tip of her plush bottom lip, tells Jungeun that she’s potentially fucked up in a way where even bandaids won’t cover the scratches, where she can’t go back and make amends.

“Sorry,” Jungeun lowers her eyes, face blanched, and grabs her cup to set it in the sink. When she briskly brushes past Jinsol, it’s cold and stiff. “You’re right, it’s nothing.”

There’s no mistaking that Jungeun had come too close to kissing Jinsol—she knows Jinsol isn’t that oblivious. The image of Jinsol’s surprised face flashes through her mind like motion-stop, and her cheeks burn with embarrassment and shame in a way that logic won’t fight.

She doesn’t utter another word and paces to the bedroom with tense shoulders, eyes burning against her back with the same intensity as the fingers digging crescents into her palms or the tingling that lingers from the touch of Jinsol’s skin against her own, reversing conversations and dialogue like an hourglass just barely running out of time, and Jungeun is starting to realize that time reverts for no one. 

The past is but an inkling of cemented memories.

“Wait—” Jinsol calls out.

But the last grain of salt has already fallen, and Jungeun starts the hourglass anew.

-

KCON 2019 is here before Jungeun even registers the smell of the season wafting aromatically in the air. She’s long since stopped asking about future schedules by now, too focused on the wave of priorities that hits them each day that Jungeun has no other choice but to live in the present and never beyond it. But it’s okay like this, having her hands full, this way she doesn’t have to think about the way her palms itch to remember the feeling of Jinsol’s hands in hers.

With KCON on their schedule for tonight, Jungeun is currently being stuffed into layers of clothing that will leave her drenched in a layer of sweat when she won’t have enough time to cool down after their performance in this stuffy weather of LA. They’re ten minutes behind on the itinerary, equating to ten times the chaos swarming the waiting room in a frenetic blur as staff ushers them through wardrobe while stylists simultaneously get their hair and makeup done.

Someone is fixing her dress with deft fingers and another is poking the end of a comb into her hair to make sure it’s of the perfect curve. It’s all too much but just enough to distract her from Jinsol’s reflection in the mirror buttoning up her shirt into place.

“Hyejoo, Lip unnie, you guys solid on your parts?” Heejin is yelling from somewhere near the clothing rack as one of the stylists applies her makeup, the other, tweaking her eyebrows. “There’s just barely enough time to run through the choreo if we need it.”

“I’m good,” Hyejoo responds, fully dressed and messing with her hair in the mirror. She smirks at her reflection, complete with wiggled eyebrows, and Jungeun rolls her eyes.

“Yeah,” Jungeun responds when the makeup brush clears from her face.

“Everyone—yes, that includes you, Jinsol—is going to the restroom before we leave, and no one is allowed to drink anything until we’ve made it inside the venue, got it?” Sooyoung warns with closed eyes as stylists crowd her with combs and hairdryers. “If any of you miss the red carpet because you decided to take a shit two minutes before the event, you’ll be pissing your pants later tonight while I watch.”

Haseul emerges from one of the changing rooms, adjusting her collar, and eyes Sooyoung warily. “Damn.”

“See if I’m joking.”

The red carpet goes smoothly for the most part, besides the light drizzle that has Jinsol sneezing into the crook of her elbow when they enter the venue in a light sheen of downpour, careful as to not dirty the sleeve of her dress. They’re immediately greeted with the designated cameras for them the second they step inside, more familiar with greeting the lens than acknowledging the people behind it, and Jungeun instinctively straightens up while Jinsol walks up beside her.

It’s been so long since she’s willingly stood this close to Jinsol, but she trains her face into a smile as they move past the cameras, but the second the lenses lower from their faces, Jungeun slows her pace to follow behind Jiwoo, and Jinsol makes a beeline to stand at the front next to Chaewon.

It tears her apart that things are like this now, but she reminds herself that it’s for the better, for the group, because one fuck up meant all twelve.

Their performance that night is a magnificent glow under the stage lights that feels both unreal and alive at the same time. It’s an experience so humbling that Jungeun feels her entire body thrumming with a captivated elation that makes her cheeks sore from smiling so big. Haseul saunters up to each of them after the performance with a tight, gratifying hug to paint love on their skin where she means it most, a gesture of unalloyed appreciation for their hard work with whispered words of thanks, something Haseul never forgets to do whenever the group reaches any kind of accomplishment, no matter the scale. 

Jinsol is the last one in Haseul’s round of hugs, opening her arms wide to embrace Haseul’s equally thin frame in a bone-crushing hug. Jungeun numbly watches as Jinsol presses her smile into Haseul’s shoulder, nose buried in the fabric of her shirt to leave stardust in the wake of her lips. 

It reminds Jungeun of all the times Jinsol would wrap her up in her arms without reason because Jinsol is a person based off intuition, feeling, someone where reason is only but a factor in her line of action. She remembers the way Jinsol would drop smiles on Jungeun, too, on her shoulder blades and nape when she would feel a burst of energy course through her like shivers, yet she’d be content with simply rocking them back and forth like a calm ocean current.

Jungeun watches on as Jinsol squeezes Haseul one last time with tight affection, the moment so private even in such a public setting as this that Jungeun feels guilty for eavesdropping, but before she can turn away unnoticed, Jinsol catches her staring from over Haseul’s shoulder and returns her gaze with hollow eyes.

That night, they smile at each other from across the way for no more than a fleeting breath that feels too much like eternity. Jungeun can hear her heart pounding louder than her thoughts because it’s hard loving someone like Jinsol whose smile once rivaled the sun but is now guarded with thorns.

-

When the cameras are on, Jungeun smiles at Jinsol like it doesn’t hurt. When the cameras are off, Jungeun looks at Jinsol like she wants it to hurt.

The world that engulfs them when the cameras are on is a sea of limitless optimism, like a switch in their heads calibrated in perfect sync with the record button that makes Jungeun feel like loving her bandmate doesn’t make her selfish, and suddenly Haseul’s grandmother isn’t in the hospital barely holding on to the string of life, Kahei’s smile hadn’t gotten dimmer because she misses her family so much, that Jiwoo hadn’t cried herself to sleep last night because of piled up insecurities, or that Jinsol had stopped trying to get Jungeun to come to.

It’s all fun and games when they’re recording or broadcasting, and Jungeun will laugh at Jinsol’s jokes with the same ease she did years ago as though a part of her doesn’t shatter with each returned smile stained with a reminiscent illusion of the past.

“First of all, Kim Lip is—” Jinsol starts, her words trailing off when Jungeun puts up a hand to signal for a better replacement of description, all of which is purely for entertainment purposes that the cameras seem to really have a knack for.

“More friendly, please,” Jungeun will joke during recordings, more teasing than suppressed longing singing in her voice as the interviewers of Hello82 smile at them from the side.

“Our _Lippie_ ,” Jinsol succumbs to the request in a fit of laughter and a high-pitched scream, so wholehearted that Jungeun believes, if only for a second, that things are okay between them, that she hasn’t already let Jinsol slip through the cracks of her fingers just like how she’d done it with the sun as it crosses the line of the horizon. “Has beautiful shoulders.”

But as soon as the cameras stop recording, the switch turns off in unison, and Jungeun pulls far away until she can’t feel Jinsol’s sad gaze on her back and pushes the rich nostalgia of Jinsol’s low laugh out of her head because she can already feel soiled emotions surfacing like spring in the pit of her stomach, like the day she got her first taste of Jinsol’s light from the mirth of her smile. Jinsol retreats to the dressing room without glancing back, and the knot in Jungeun’s throat finally loosens, but never completely.

Out of sight and out of mind is where she needs Jinsol to be. But the unprecedented truth is that she craves a reality where the sun stays right on the horizon and doesn't set, where she doesn’t feel ashamed in pressing her forehead between Jinsol’s shoulder blades even when the cameras are off because sometimes, she gets tired of living through the lens of someone else’s eyes.

-

The cool breeze of the air conditioner is forgiving against the heated weather of LA when Jungeun steps out of the shower, a towel hanging off carelessly over her shoulder. She’s exhausted to the bones, just as she’d predicted from their inhumanly packed schedules that only surface when they’re promoting overseas, given the limited amount of time for expanding international fanbase before they’re all shoved into claustrophobic plane seats of their returning flight.

Her hair is still dripping wet, and it’s usually like this, her passing right out on the bed after a long day before the damp strands have a chance to dry, not making use of the provided hair dryer because she’s just too tired to care to that extent. She does dab the towel around the ends, a minimal effort to absorb as much moisture as she can, but still an effort nonetheless.

She’s putting on her shirt when three knocks are heard on the door of her hotel room, her hands turning into a hasty mess as she wiggles her way to speed attire herself so that whoever’s waiting outside doesn’t turn inconveniently impatient. The collar of her shirt is damp with drops of water, and she fecklessly flicks her hair to the back as she reaches out to twist the cold doorknob.

Of all the people that could’ve shown up—such as Yerim, known for her bizarre knack for making rounds to all of their rooms, reason unapparent, before she tucks herself to bed—it’s Jinsol who stands at the doorway, already in her favourite pajamas that Chaewon had gotten her for her birthday.

“Hey, unnie,” Jungeun says. It comes out more of a surprised yelp than an actual greeting, and she hopes Jinsol doesn’t catch on to it.

“Can I come in?” is the first thing Jinsol says. Jungeun hesitantly steps aside, and it’s alarming that she’s wary of all her actions now when it used to come out so naturally, when Jinsol used to just barge into her room without ever asking for permission. 

Jinsol’s footsteps are heavy against the carpet when she trudges in with a slight slump in her shoulders. Jungeun can tell that she’s tired, too, and she wants to properly wrap her arms around Jinsol’s neck into a hug and tell her she’s done well today.

“You should blow your hair dry before you go to sleep,” Jinsol says, coming to a stop a few steps away from the bed and glancing around at nothing in particular. “Our manager will be pissed if you come down with a cold.”

Jungeun nods and averts her eyes to the side. The air is so thick that Jungeun breathes through her nose and not her mouth in hopes that she doesn’t say anything she’ll regret. The silence does nothing but drag on into a whirlpool of lost words, accompanied by the occasional footsteps against carpet outside her hotel room.

Jungeun doesn’t know if she wants to reach out into the silence to fetch for words or run away empty handed. She’s treading on thin ice with talk so cheap and walls more holographic than transparent that Jinsol looks chromatic in her guarded state—Jungeun settles for listening to Jinsol’s rhythmic breathing instead, but silence is never really silence, and in a fragmented time like this, it’s deafening when there’s so much distance in between.

She should have known better by now than to expect Jinsol to not demand for answers.

“Why do you ignore me when the cameras are off?”

There’s no bite in her words, all the resentment washed away with morose undertone, but Jungeun feels them like a bruising punch to her gut, enough to turn her insides purple and bleeding all over.

Where words fail her, all she can think of are overused cliches stained with platitude, _it’s not you, it’s me._

“I don’t ignore you,” Jungeun says, unable to meet Jinsol’s eyes.

“You don’t even look at me anymore.”

Jungeun understands the context of what she means better than Jinsol probably does, feels the weight more than Jinsol holds, but Jungeun is not made of enough steel power to strip Jinsol entirely from her life, mostly thin muscles and worn off bones to cover her withering heart, and a part of her still holds a special place for Jinsol’s gentle hands.

She wants to hold onto friendship, onto crystal fragments of youth and pre-debut, but it’s hard trying to remember what that’s like anymore when she’s loved someone for so long and has forgotten what life was like before Jinsol. The past is a lost art without a light to lead the way.

“You’re overthinking,” Jungeun tries to mask the way her remark doesn’t even convince herself, not even by a bit.

“Then look at me.”

Jungeun swallows hard and shifts her gaze back to Jinsol, preparing herself for what she doesn’t want to see, yet in doing so, she’s taken aback because Jinsol stands right before her, eyes full of an aggrieved sadness that doesn’t suit her face.

“Why is it—” Jinsol says quietly, just barely a whisper. “—that every time I look at you, you’re always miles away, resenting my existence?”

“You know that’s not true,” Jungeun mutters firmly. She doesn’t resent Jinsol’s existence, she resents herself, down to the muscle fibre of her very being.

“But that’s the thing, Jungeun,” Jinsol tenses her jaw. “I don’t know what’s true and what’s not anymore, not when you treat me worse than dirt because at least you acknowledge the ground you walk on—”

“ _Stop,”_ Jungeun almost cries, but it takes everything in her to choke down the pain that rises up her throat like bile because this isn’t how it’s supposed to be, not when she'd planned everything out in accordance when she was fifteen, knowing what to expect yet expecting nothing at all. She finds her fingers threading lightly against Jinsol’s shirt, hoping that it’ll somehow wash away her insecurities. “Just stop, it’s not what you think.”

“Then what is it? Why don’t you just fucking spit it out—”

And Jungeun does, right up against Jinsol’s lips with a roughness that renders them both breathless and starving for air. It’s dangerous, impulsive, but all Jungeun can think of is the way she’s suddenly kissing Jinsol by accident with more force than reason, and she pulls away so fast that Jinsol’s lips are still left parted from the ghost of the kiss.

Jungeun’s not spontaneous, yet she knows this could have easily ruined their careers if there were any hidden cameras around or if the heavy curtains are left opened. She brings her fingers up to touch her simmering lips while Jinsol stares at her speechless, a million emotions flickering across her face in quick succession as Jungeun stands with her feet planted on the carpet, regret coursing through her like river current.

“I’m sorry,” Jungeun breathes, running a hand through her hair. “ _Fuck_ , I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

Jungeun expects Jinsol to leave, to ask her what the hell she was thinking, for a friendship carefully constructed through years of effort to crumble right before her eyes into broken syllables of _friends_ and _forever._ Yet instead, Jinsol pulls her by the circle of her wrist, her grip so tight and with so much force that Jungeun stumbles on her feet until her back hits the opposite wall. Jinsol turns to face her then, taking one step forward until her breath is touching Jungeun’s lips and cornering her in place.

“Jinsol, what are you—”

Jungeun doesn’t get to finish her sentence because Jinsol’s lips are on hers again, this time with so much desperation that Jungeun reaches out to grip at the back of her neck to hold on and pull closer. Her mind is spinning so fast that she finds herself unable to keep up, not when Jinsol is feeding all of her curiosities and teaching her just how soft those lips can be and how silky her tongue can feel, right here against her own. She never imagined this to be so exhilarating with lights dancing behind her eyelids like LA on Jinsol’s cheekbones. She also never imagined there to be the deafening chime of warning bells ringing sharply in her ears each time she drags a breathy sigh from Jinsol’s mouth.

And she knows why they shouldn’t be doing this, licking the words right out of each other’s mouths instead of saying it out loud and resorting to leaving things unresolved, unmanaged, un- _everything_ so that it hangs thick in the air like molasses. 

But no, Jungeun doesn’t push Jinsol away, not when she’s already tasted sin at the back of her tongue, and Jinsol doesn’t push her away either, they don’t push each other away—the only thing Jungeun is pushing away is how wrong it is to kiss on a love she’s spent so long suppressing in hopes that it’d wither away like an unwatered flower. Slowly, painfully, but surely.

She lets Jinsol’s small noises send waves of heat to her spine that arches her back to lean impossibly closer into their pressed bodies, lets Jinsol hold the edge of her jaw with her electrifying palms, and with a heated sigh, she lets Jinsol navigate their bodies to press her down with her back against the bed. Jinsol has her bottom lip pulled in between her teeth, eyes trained into concentration as she glances at Jungeun through her fluttering eyelashes.

“Talk to me, Jungeun,” Jinsol whispers into her lips, but in the heat of the moment, Jungeun fails to register the way the words come out like shattered glass. “Tell me what you want.”

There is a line that Jungeun has never crossed in the times that she’d figured out why looking at Jinsol feels so easy but painful at the same time, a line that she’s had to pull herself away from so many times, but here they are, completely past that line, with Jinsol staring down at her like she’s just as broken as Jungeun is, like she’d forgotten how to genuinely smile again.

And this is all Jungeun had wanted—spent endless night after endless night wondering just how Jinsol would kiss, just how she would sound, just what she would taste like, and for once, Jungeun doesn’t want to let go. For once, she wants the sun to stay.

Even if it’s just for tonight.

“Stay,” the word rolls off Jungeun’s tongue like poison staining on every surface of her skin, her heart, her mask that she’d put up to hide the feelings that had already stretched far into the void, unattainable and irreversible. But even then, Jungeun wants to think that it’s okay to be selfish. 

Something flickers through Jinsol’s eyes with gloss before she’s pressing her fingers into Jungeun’s hip, hard enough to bruise, and leaning in to melt their lips into each other. Jinsol kisses like she wants to find answers, a purpose, a way to bring herself back together, and Jungeun kisses like she wants to break Jinsol again and again if only to put her back together herself. 

Jinsol trails kisses from her lips to her jaw, all the way down to the juncture of her neck and it sets off an ignition inside Jungeun that doesn’t just lap at her insides anymore, because Jinsol is fire and Jungeun knows that there’s no way to touch fire without getting burnt. But if that’s what it takes, then so be it.

Her mind is so hazy with lust that she struggles to comprehend the whispers Jinsol is breathing against her neck that will most certainly leave marks, but everything is blurry and nothing else really matters other than her desire to touch, to feel, to _love_. Jungeun reaches out to tangle her fingers around Jinsol’s hair, finding purchase against anything tangible to keep her grounded because her mind is dazed beyond comprehensive thinking, a sort of high that makes her feel like she’s not entirely there.

Hands roam appreciatively down Jungeun’s side, Jinsol’s slender fingers running down the ridges of her ribs before slipping them entirely under the hem of Jungeun’s shirt—Jinsol’s fingers are cold on the smooth of her tightly flexed abdomen, lulling Jungeun into a fit of convulsive longing that she can no longer choke down, yet it’s hot enough to leave blazes on the surface of her skin that will take the form of finger-indents the morning after. 

Jungeun responds with little sighs and slightly heavier breaths at the tingling sensation of Jinsol’s lips mapping out the veins on her neck and sucking lightly right at her pulse, a delightful surprise just enough to send a careless whimper out from between her teeth. The quiet air of the spacious hotel room amplifies the wronged release of pleasure and raises a red flag deep in the corner of Jungeun’s mind, tagged _risky,_ but before she can even register it, the sole of her back leaves the silky fabric of the bed and she finds herself being tugged up and forward, giving room for Jinsol to slide the clothed barrier between them over her head and to the side of the bed.

The cold hits her fully then, the cool breeze of the air conditioner settling on her bare skin to quiver it enough for goosebumps, and from this position she can catch the look on Jinsol’s face—her eyes trailing along the lines of Jungeun’s body with a steely look of anguish desperation, and her mouth kissed swollen and bitten. The frosty air blanketing them feels likes a rainy, wintry night and the only place of warmth Jungeun can seek from is in Jinsol’s glowing figure under the dim yellow lights dotting the ceiling. 

And so Jungeun does.

She curls a finger under Jinsol’s chin and leans even closer, the small gap between them bridged with a breath that ghosts over Jungeun’s lips before they’re caught in Jinsol’s electrifying ones, and it’s so unfair, Jungeun thinks, that Jinsol can easily make another wave of flowers bloom and swell in her chest when they all should’ve been dead, that she can’t ever stop falling, and she knows the only way she’ll let go is if Jinsol asks her to, if Jinsol pushes her off the ledge herself. But Jinsol loops an arm around Jungeun’s neck to deepen the kiss, as if she wants to burn unsaid words onto Jungeun’s tongue, as if she’s saying, _I’ll stay._

Her thumbs find the buttons of Jinsol’s shirt, messy fingers doing the bare minimum to release them because she’s too distracted by the way Jinsol’s tongue is swiping along the seam of her lip. Her teeth catch on Jinsol’s bottom lip, and she bites, hard, until she can hear Jinsol’s muffled groan wafting into the space of her throat, hips bucking up against Jungeun’s. She soon loses herself in trailing her tongue along the column of Jinsol’s neck, down to her exposed collarbones where Jungeun had successfully slid off her shirt from, savoring the little gasps and moans and mewls Jinsol is so generous with. 

Each mark she plants onto the curves of Jinsol’s neck is another year of their well established friendship melting into perished grains of dust, until all that’s left are the remnants of Jinsol’s smile tucked safely in the labyrinth of her memory and the ghost of jovial promises they’d exchanged when they were nothing but innocent souls. But she buries her rational thinking deep into the dark safety of this intimacy, and chooses to bask in the kisses that Jinsol is letting her imprint to her half-naked torso.

 _“God,_ Jungeun,” she hears Jinsol whisper, more of a breathy escape than a coherent sentence.

Jinsol smells like pink cotton candy, a sweet fragrance that Jungeun has familiarized herself with throughout countless cuddles and bone-crushing hugs, yet it still feels like a first-time each time she breathes in, her scent never failing to fill up her insides with giddiness—

Jinsol is a book with messy annotations scribbled in the columns, and Jungeun wants nothing more than to memorize her scent, her words, page by page in her entirety.

It catches her off guard then, making her pull back when Jinsol dips her fingers into the waistband of her shorts, halting to a stop with hesitance heavy on the sides of Jungeun’s hip. Jinsol looks up through her lashes, her gaze akin to worry, like a lost child waiting for reassurance.

“It’s okay,” Jungeun tells her. 

It’s not okay, none of this is okay, but Jungeun easily lifts her hips when Jinsol tugs, hissing softly when the chilly, artificial air sends another wave of cold front. She watches Jinsol the entire way as she drags her kisses from her neck to her bare chest, warmth tickling her bare skin when they follow along the lines of her abdomen, and down to the walls of her inner thigh.

It’s all lost coherency from there, a highly fidelity daze that fogs the edges of her mind when Jinsol leans in without warning. Jungeun grapples for purchase against the fabric of the bed, tossing her head back with drawn out moans that burn white behind her eyelids. She’s not granted any time to catch her breath before Jinsol starts working up a rhythm, taking her into the heat of her tongue, and Jungeun runs her fingers carefully through the silky hair of Jinsol’s head between her legs, pushing her hair to the side and out of her eyes before holding, gently, at the back of her neck.

The eager rush of raw need is bright where it burns in the pit of Jungeun’s stomach, desperate to have Jinsol against her, to satiate beyond a state of clothed recreation and one of just skin on skin with her bones itching and her hands seeking to roam every inch of skin they can reach. Granted, she hasn’t had much experience with this, but Jinsol is uncharted landscape needing to be roamed—locked up in the same room, clothless and breathless with fire under her skin, her palms yearn to glide down the valley of her smooth back, the sharp plateaus of her collarbones, and to travel every part of her that has yet to be explored. Jinsol is her atlas where she had been lost before.

Jungeun wills her hips to stay still when Jinsol picks up her pace, and her mind is a sluggish, slow-motion traffic jam where Jinsol fits her gaze up just as the breath of a deep groan makes itself known from her mouth and reaches out with her other hand to press their palms together, holding their hands at the juncture of Jungeun’s hip. She doesn’t let her mind wander off in digression with curiosities about Jinsol’s inexperienced mouth, instead dwelling on the fact that this feels sinfully right and she is selfish in all its worth.

“Almost there,” Jungeun says around a hitched moan, eyebrows furrowed tightly together. The way Jinsol responds almost too eagerly makes her cheeks flush and her vision whirl, enough to send her over the edge. The strength and pleasure of the high comes in the form of a crash that rocks through her throbbing veins, making her legs quiver and Jinsol’s name stumbling out of her lips without control. 

Jinsol slides off, tongue peeking out to lick her glistening lips, and Jungeun twitches at the sight of her lips swollen crimson. She lazily strokes Jungeun’s hand, catching her breath while she rests her chin on Jungeun’s knee. Jungeun’s chest swells at the sight, and she leans forward to kiss her, tastes herself bitter on the roof of Jinsol’s mouth and wraps her hand around Jinsol’s wrist to still her movements. 

She tugs Jinsol to the side, and Jinsol adjusts so that she’s on her back, head perched atop a pillow with Jungeun maneuvering to hover over her. Her lips follow Jinsol’s retrieving ones, and Jinsol accommodates by spreading her thighs a little wider for Jungeun to press closer. She feels so handsy, the way she can’t stop caressing her palms so softly along Jinsol’s skin, from smooth chest and down her waist before curving along her torso, leaving goosebumps in their wake.

Every touch is electric, and Jungeun learns how much she likes being shocked.

“This is—” Jungeun pulls back slightly, and she can feel Jinsol’s hot breath hitting the seam of her lips. “This is okay, right?”

It comes a little belatedly, the question. Almost laughable, given just how far they’ve come already. 

“Jungeun,” Jinsol manages to say in between the heavy heaves of breath, her fingers buried in Jungeun’s hair trembling, and something inside Jungeun twists when she catches a hint of desperation in Jinsol’s voice that comes out broken, almost like she’s begging—begging for someone to hold, for things to be okay again. “Please.”

Jungeun will hold her, if that’s what Jinsol wants, if that’s what she needs.

She latches her fingers onto Jinsol’s sharp hips to knead the flesh before sliding down and hooking them into the waistband to swiftly slide down her pants in one go. Jungeun presses a kiss on the bent knee, and another somewhere along her inner thigh.

It’s a patient, deliberate process, but Jinsol eventually takes two fingers easily, soft moans escaping her parted lips as Jungeun meticulously works her open. Jinsol’s hips, in turn, jerk forward from sensitivity, body so high strung from pleasure that she has lost almost all control of her own body. 

Jinsol is wound so tight but Jungeun still manages, sliding in carefully, inch by inch, groaning low as Jinsol digs her fingernails into her back, deep enough to draw blood, and brings her back down for a kiss, this time with less lips and more tongue that swipes along Jungeun’s teeth, licking into her mouth. This is more than enough for Jungeun to completely lose control, but she doesn’t—she takes it steady and picks up a rhythmic pace.

It’s terrifying yet not at all, how Jungeun is able to draw out her own name from Jinsol when she starts to move in earnest, shallow thrusts completely off the table now that Jinsol isn’t even able to say anything but a variation of Jungeun’s name and _please,_ and she’s beautiful like this, too, nearly delirious with the feeling, wanting everything all at once.

And Jinsol is warm around her, and god, there is nothing that will spur Jungeun on better than the sound of her own name falling out of Jinsol’s mouth like a prayer, again and again, Jinsol’s breathy exhales the only thing Jungeun can hear. Jinsol nearly tipping off the edge the only thing Jungeun can see.

Jinsol’s lips are inconsistently breathing against hers, each moan that escapes her lips enough to send a wave of heat coiling impossibly in the pit of Jungeun’s stomach like wildfire. The nails on her back curls even further into her skin when the force of release hits Jinsol so hard that she trembles against Jungeun’s torso, her thighs quaking against the sides of Jungeun’s hip. 

The sting is raw and fresh when Jinsol finally loosens her grip, dragging a long, painful hiss out of Jungeun, but it lasts for only mere seconds when Jungeun’s hand finds Jinsol’s, slipping her fingers through the spaces between them as though it’s the only thing that she’ll ever find peace in. The exhaustion coupled with the sight of Jinsol beneath her is enough for Jungeun’s knees to finally buckle and give out, and she collapses on Jinsol heavily, feels Jinsol’s chest heaving against hers as she basks in the afterglow with voices hoarse from use and the forgiving warmth of Jinsol’s skin.

Quiet descends on them, and now that rush of heat from before has been drained out, another one settles in, Jungeun’s foggy mind coming back to its right senses and leaving her car alarm heart ringing, ringing, and ringing. And if she takes the effort to make out the look on Jinsol’s face, it’s disorientated, lost, even, like she’s being reeled back in shock after losing control of all her actions, and the unsaid words tread dangerously along a fine line that none of them are brave enough to catch.

In the end, it’s Jinsol who splits the silence in half.

“You have goosebumps all over,” she says while tugging the blanket over their shoulders, shifting on her spot to fit the curves of their bodies into each other, and everything around them settles. Everything except for the erratic beating of Jungeun’s heart drumming behind her chest, a most unfamiliar marching song that has her pressing closer into Jinsol until all that’s left between them are clashing ribcages and bumping of Jungeun’s forehead under Jinsol’s chin.

She wants to say so many things, wants to apologize for ruining everything they worked so hard on harbouring, wants to tell Jinsol that things are okay, a million _I love you’s_ sitting at the tip of her tongue just waiting to roll off. But no, none of that comes out from Jungeun’s mouth except for the lingering bitterness she exhales, so instead—

Instead, Jungeun tightens her grip around Jinsol amidst the car crash that is her heart, breathes Jinsol in, and falls asleep with a lungful of candied fragrance and fearful thoughts transcending into nightmares.

-

It hits Jungeun a little too late, the realization that she doesn’t quite remember how to breathe anymore.

When there are mountains of work and shootings slotted into her schedule like tight ropes on her neck, she forgets that it is an essential and natural part of a human to take in soothing puffs of air for the purpose of staying alive, but it has reached a point where Jungeun lives off just by breathing out—out to an alternative space where she wished breathing in feels a little easier and doesn’t feel like needles poking along the lines of her throat.

They’re busy, because they’re always busy, and that at least forces Jungeun to get out of bed every morning and act like some semblance of a functioning human being without constantly being reminded of how she had fallen asleep with Jinsol in her arms, but had to wake up come morning to slap a thick layer of foundation over the surface of her neck in an attempt to erase all evidence of last night. Jungeun had wanted to kiss Jinsol one last time before slipping out of bed, but Jinsol was never hers to kiss or hers to love. So instead, she patches up her walls and pulls away when Jinsol tries to hold her hand on her way out of the hotel room.

It’s easier this way when she doesn’t have to fear the end to something she’s never known.

The few days following the incident had been an awkward mess that left them impossibly more distant than before, much like stretched elastic with Jungeun finding ways to stay out of sight until everything in the spaces between are a tangle of complicated knots that can’t be undone. If the others had noticed their behaviour, they don’t mention it and turn a blind eye on the matter for them to dictate the outcome themselves. The last time any of them had meddled in someone else’s affairs had left Hyejoo with a bruised shin and Chaewon with the misunderstanding that Jinsol secretly despised her. All unfavorable and unconventional blowoffs that no one wishes to summon twice.

Her smiles are painfully bright in front of the fans, and Jinsol’s arms still find their way around Jungeun’s shoulders whenever they’re under the same frame of a camera, but Jungeun slips out of Jinsol’s grasps as soon as the recording button hits pause, because it’s hard to breathe the same air with Jinsol when there are crystals of ice building up in her airway, blocking everything she needs to inhale without drawing trickles of blood. 

Fear, Jungeun later learns, can be terrifying when it is associated with a love that’s been buried deep under the currents for too long. It closes in on her throat and keeps her up for numerous nights, thunderstorms spiralling in her muddled pool of garbled thoughts threatening to drown her in lost words and a friendship washed away by violent waterfalls. Jungeun was selfish for one night, and it’s the fear of losing love and a precious friend and everything in between that she can’t afford to be selfish for another. 

But it isn’t always easy, especially when the fatigue on Jinsol’s face tells Jungeun she’s just as restless as she is, when Jinsol barely eats more than a spoonful of rice before she’s retreating back to her bedroom without so much sparing the group a second glance, when Jinsol yanks Jungeun by the wrist into the darkness of their bathroom one night, eyes coloured with so much pain that it sweeps out all of the remaining air from Jungeun’s lungs with only guilt and regret for her to cling onto.

“You got what you wanted right?” Jinsol whispers, and her voice sounds uncharacteristically shaken up from demanding for an answer like she just needed a reason, any reason. “You just needed to relieve yourself, right? From all this stress.”

And that’s the thing, mutual relief, something that was no taboo when it came to an industry that holed up girls with girls and boys with boys for years on end without any exposure to intimate interaction beyond stuffy dorms—it doesn’t help that so many of them are in the hormonal stages of their early twenties.

But they’ve all heard the rumours, a hushed breeze that passed from ear to ear amongst idols and idols only, understand from firsthand experience how taking promotional periods could be where even a full night’s rest and a tub of stolen mint ice cream couldn’t relieve the stress that wore deep within their muscles.

It is, a general notion, understood that two girls of the same group touching each other can be solely platonic and is the best and most effective stress relievers in times of need. Jungeun had overheard the stories in the dressing rooms of the KBS building during Butterfly promotions and she hasn’t forgotten it since.

Where Jinsol sees this as sexual frustration, Jungeun understands it as desperate love, and when she’s known someone so intimately beyond the levels of hand holding and clothed cuddles, those are the changes that scream the loudest. 

Jungeun feels so dirty all over for letting Jinsol believe that it was nothing more than a spotless hookup, a stress reliever when in actuality, it’s tearing Jungeun apart. She wants to take Jinsol’s hand into her own to melt away all doubts, wants to pull Jinsol into a tight embrace and let her beating heart do all the talking, but she chokes back the growing urges and slips right out of Jinsol’s grasp. She feels dirty and selfish, so selfish.

It’s being engulfed in the dark space of the washroom that Jungeun decides telling white lies is a compromise she’s willing to make if she can pretend that being in love with Jinsol is less of a throbbing ache and more of a smiling heart. 

But being around Jinsol is nearly impossible now, it’s like their personal wall of memories has been completely erased until it’s blank like torn white paper as a pitiful souvenir recovered from this strayed path. Breathing in feels more like a gifted privilege than a natural trait for a sinner like Jungeun, and on some level she recognizes she’s broken in a way that’s probably irreparable for a really long time, if not forever.

Because Jinsol stops looking at her when they pass each other in the mornings with identical darkness under their eyes that could only come from staying up too late. They still smile at each other when the cameras are on, yet somehow, it haunts Jungeun that Jinsol feels farther than ever.

-

The move into their new dorm is set up to be a new beginning, but Jinsol does not spare her even one pity glance before she’s steering into Hyunjin, Jiwoo, and Yerim’s room with all of her belongings. Jungeun is so distracted by the way her throat constricts like a chokehold grasp around her neck that she doesn’t notice Heejin throwing an arm around her shoulders and suggesting for them to be roommates.

“Well shit,” Heejin frowns, pulling away. “Leave it to Kim Lip to give a cold ass rejection.”

She couldn’t be more right.

“Oh, sorry,” Jungeun shucks out of her daze and reaches down to grab both hers and Heejin’s luggages to wheel into the last bedroom, the one just beside Sooyoung’s. “I was trying to remember if I left anything behind.”

Her dignity, maybe. Or her childhood and the first time she cried salty tears on Haseul’s welcoming shoulder, the first time Kahei taught her how to make fried rice, when she got her first taste of Hyunjin’s anger after using the rest of her shampoo, the time she comforted Yerim and showered her with compliments until her eyes were swollen with dried-up tears instead of the other way around, the time Sooyoung sat her down at the kitchen table the day before their debut and told her about the values of youth, dreams, perseverance, and the time Jinsol fell asleep with her head pillowed against the smooth expanse of Jungeun’s stomach after staying up an entire night, talking about the night sky and the dreams it reminded her of with Studio Ghibli films playing tirelessly in the background.

Jungeun falls into a dreamless sleep that night to the sound of laughter spewing from the opposite room and wakes up five times in between, gasping for breathable air where she’d been drowning in a sea of cerulean dreams from the spacious expanse of the new room. Too big, too void. It’s lonely, not seeing three sets of bunk beds beside her whenever she shifts on her mattress, but it isn’t entirely unfamiliar, tracing moonlight on the walls to lull herself to sleep with the sound of Chaewon’s heavy breathing to accompany it.

The second time she blinks her eyes open is to cupboard opening and closing from outside their door, muffled with hushed whispers just barely audible above the light buzzing of the heater that reminds her of summer in Cheongju. 

She shuts out the sound of Jinsol’s low voice rumbling through the gap under the door while she and Hyunjin ransack the kitchen and throws an arm over her eyes to shield away the silver of light trickling along the floor like lukewarm tungsten. Jinsol noisily curses an insult at Hyunjin who returns the growl with an equally taunting remark, the usual bickering that transpired between the two that Jungeun doesn’t try deciphering in favour of swallowing down jealousy.

It isn’t until half an hour later when the kitchen lights flicker off into an illuminated darkness with Jinsol’s voice as the last thing ringing through the dorm before their bedroom door finally clicks shut.

The third time Jungeun falls asleep is to the memory of a longevous handshake followed by a tangle of pinky promises with Jinsol’s resolute declaration to be roommates when the time comes for them to move on. But if she lets herself think about it, goodbyes are never her forte, not in the way the arts are, and leaving a part of herself behind is much like planting seeds on soiled ground where her soles had imprinted, scattering her old remnants for the memories to flourish like wildflowers.

It means being in multiple places at once through fragments in time and finding home in the hearts of both tangible and intangible forms. She had left without saying goodbye because it isn’t farewell—these memories are always going to be a part of her until the day she dies.

She remembers the way Heejin had stopped in the doorway and chanced a reminiscent look back that softened the lines of her eyes, a flood of memories and first-times dancing through the halls of the small dorm and living in its walls like ghosts. Hyunjin was the last to step out of their bedroom, palm smoothing down the worn, paint-chipped door frame with a distance smile nudging at her lips that Jungeun catches when she stepped past Heejin at the entrance, an armful of memorabilia and useless knick-knacks collected throughout the years with cold, plastic figurines and spine-bent manga books piling tall. 

She understands when she hears Heejin and Hyunjin’s delicate laughter echo throughout the empty room to make the best of farewells as she reaches the top of the stairwell and stops. Instead of goodbye, Heejin flips to the next chapter and dog ears the page.

“Hey, Hyunjin, remember how we came here four years ago?”

-

“So, Jungeun, have you sucked face with anyone recently?”

It’s nothing new, these kinds of lighthearted inquisitions between girls their age, yet still, it catches her off-guard enough that the few beats she misses out of hesitance and almost gives her entire facade away into one of exuded honesty. 

It’s such typical Sooyoung shit to spew that she almost rolls her eyes with flair if not for the fact that she _has_ sucked face with someone recently. If she chews on the inside of her cheek hard enough, she thinks she can still taste Jinsol’s debauched moans sparking against her teeth and sliding down the walls of her throat like fire.

But this situation is mirthful enough for her to imagine a roomful of awestruck reactions had she said, “Jinsol, actually,” with an apathetic shrug of her shoulders. The chances of her shocking the living hell out of her members with such news is only one impulsive answer away, but Jungeun’s ailing competence for confrontation leads her to take on an alternative path where she moves an arm behind her head to make this position on the floor of the dance studio doable and says, short and simple, “No.”

“Please, Lip unnie probably gets grossed out from wiping her own ass,” Hyunjin pitches in unnecessarily, the sound of her levity anything but amusing as Jungeun directs a loud frown in her direction, which does little to stop her from continuing. “Have you seen her collection of face wash and beauty cream?”

“She carries around three chapstick tubes,” Hyejoo adds, lips turning up at the corners. “I doubt she’d put her lips on anyone else. Not yet, at least.”

“Well let’s be honest here, Jungeun is lowkey popular with the male idols, so she could probably get anyone she wanted,” Haseul says near the mirror, browsing through her phone on her side. “Don’t even give her any ideas.”

“You probably just inadvertently inflated her ego with the popularity remark there,” Sooyoung scoffs.

“Okay first, I’m only twenty, so I still get hella acne. Hence the face wash and creams,” Jungeun argues, idly swiping back and forth between the homescreen pages of her phone. “Second, I carry three chapstick tubes because I always end up losing one or two. And third, thanks Haseul.”

“So nothing interesting? What a bummer,” Hyejoo refutes, stretching her arms overhead and yawns.

“No,” Jungeun confirms, dropping her phone on her chest and folding her hands behind her neck. “Besides, I’m not interested in hooking up or dating any guys right now.”

“Girls, then?” Sooyoung asks, an eyebrow raised. The others look at her with equally amused expressions—minus Jinsol, Heejin and Yeojin, who are currently out on dinner-duty tonight to retrieve their chicken.

Jungeun shrinks under the scrutiny and says, “What?”

“Girls,” Sooyoung repeats. “So you’re interested in girls?”

“No? I didn’t say that,” Jungeun defends, sitting up. “I’m just not interested in the hook up scene right now. We have so much shit going on that I barely have time to think.”

“Well, I’m just saying,” Sooyoung shrugs, propping herself up with her head pillowed in her palm. “No one’s judging you if you swing that way, just so you know.”

Before Jungeun can conjure up some form of a reasonable excuse to combat Sooyoung’s subtle but unequivocal implication, Jinsol, Heejin and Yeojin come barreling through the door with bags of fried chicken in hand, laughing about something Jungeun doesn’t register because she’s far too distracted by the way Sooyoung glances away to share pointed looks with Hyejoo from behind Heejin's towering person, leaving her confounded till her mind goes blank. They drop the subject altogether without so much as an explanation.

“So, what about you, Heejin?” Sooyoung asks, steering the conversation back onto the main path and away from the dead end that Jungeun had encountered. Hyunjin grabs the bag from Heejin's hand and smiles helpfully at her from Sooyoung’s persistence.

“What about me?” Heejin asks curiously, shrugging off her jacket and tossing it on the floor to kneel down on. She joins Hyunjin in spreading out the boxes and tosses the empty bag to one side. Jinsol follows suit and lifts a box to sniff at the contents with a contented sigh.

“Any hook ups lately?” Hyejoo elaborates eloquently. Out of her peripheral, Jungeun watches Jinsol tense up and sit back on her haunches, reflexively avoiding eye contact to avoid being questioned.

“Why would I ever want to let you guys in on my sex life?” Heejin deadpans but continues anyway because nothing was ever left unsaid between them that wouldn’t eventually be discovered or weaselled out—for most of them, that is. “But no, to answer your question, I barely even have time to sleep.”

“Guess that makes most of us,” Sooyoung announces, reaching forward to snag the first nugget. “What about you, Jinsol?”

“Uh—”

“What about the guy from your high school, the one you talked about the other day?” Hyunjin cuts off, stuffing some radish in her mouth. Jinsol glares at her, and it’s in the cautious worry lines of her face and the discreet gloss of her eyes that unleashes the rampage of doubt in Jungeun’s mind.

Jungeun stops chewing on cartilage and feels a cold, discomforting shiver slither down the knobs of her spine and settle thick within her stomach, so heavy she loses her appetite, even if she’s only running on salad and bread. She knows she’s in no position to feel apprehension of the sickly kind because Jinsol was never only hers to kiss, let alone keep, and Jungeun has been reminding herself into repetitive mantras that she had no say in who Jinsol fools around with outside their tainted memory of that night, the hidden sanctuary in their tangled web of feelings that felt more right than wrong up until morning.

But it doesn’t make it any more pleasant, the lack of denial on Jinsol’s end, replaced, instead, with a hesitant silence. It holds the weight of an implication that Jungeun wants to ignore but can’t seem to do because it makes her feel like shit that Jinsol sought heat in bodies that weren’t hers. Like a rude awakening, she thinks, because it’s so easy to forget the biggest rule she’d set after breaking the previous. Being in love with Jinsol means disregarding herself to a level where breathing moans and smooth skin in spacious hotel rooms were her only say.

Jungeun waits impatiently for a response that never comes, excruciatingly so, because Jinsol is cut off halfway through her response and never granted the chance to answer in full before their choreographer is pushing back into the studio from his short venture to the third floor, joining them for dinner with his ipad setup to play choreography pieces that had inspired their new one. 

The conversation filter instinctively comes up to ensure that none of them disclosed anything that would potentially get them into trouble, which includes talk about boys and, on some occasions, their dietary choices that fail to abide by company rules—a separation between the artist and the staff so apparent and forever persisting to preserve a part of them that the company didn’t own in fine print by written documentation. It’s the least they could do, Jungeun thinks, granting them their right to be kids where they had been forced to grow up much too soon.

Later, in the eerie white noise of her bedroom, Jungeun doesn’t stay awake long enough to mull over Jinsol’s life outside their circle, aware that she’d lost her right to the moment she decided to walk away from the sun.

-

“Hey, where’s Jinsol?”

Jungeun doesn’t know what prompts Sooyoung to approach her first out of the other four lazing in the living room behind her, but she does. Lowering her phone, she tugs an earbud out of one ear, sliding her legs off the chair as Sooyoung clambers into the seat and sets her bowl of rice on the table.

“How should I know?” Jungeun asks with genuine confusion, the lack of malice in her face replaced with mere curiosity. She thumbs at the side buttons of her phone and lowers the volume.

“I don’t know,” Sooyoung frowns and checks the time on her own phone. “You guys are usually together.”

“She snuck out to meet that guy at karaoke,” Hyunjin informes from the couch. She’s on her stomach with a face full of couch leather, watching Haseul and Kahei sort through a pile of fresh laundry. Jungeun, resident crusader of all things scented, enjoys the lavender wafting into her nose up until the words tarnish all of her senses and any lingering flowers clinging to the edge of her mind. “Pretty sure that eloquently translates to getting laid.”

“Like, the one from her high school?” Sooyoung perks, raising a brow.

“That’s the one. I mentioned him the other day in the studio before we were cut off,” Hyunjin shifts her head on the arm rest. “She’s been talking to him a lot lately.”

Jungeun’s stomach twists with something that makes her shift uncomfortably on the woodwork of the chair, blood running cold, exothermic, at the thought. This is the unspoken answer that never came that night on the studio floor, fingers covered in chicken grease and question swept under the mat, prolonged days into the future for this revelation. She wishes she could do the same for the dust that fills her lungs and clings to the walls of her throat, sucking away every ounce of moisture and all the words she has yet to get out.

“No wonder she’s never at home anymore,” Haseul backtracks thoughtfully, tossing a pair of pants to the side that is carelessly labeled “Chaewon” with red sharpie. 

“Did she tell you anything about him?” Kahei asks out of curiosity and pauses to stretch, hands and feet going in opposite directions and burrowing under the warm pile of clothes.

“Not really, she’s kind of shy about stuff like that,” Hyunjin says, picking lint off her sweater. “I usually have to pry to get her to open up about those things.”

“Maybe there’s just not much to pry about in the first place,” Jiwoo emerges from the bedroom and collapses beside Hyunjin. “If you know what I mean.”

“Oh, didn’t he take Jinsol to—” Sooyoung starts around a mouthful of rice, but the sound of Jungeun’s chair scraping across the floor in her haste to stand up cuts her off halfway, except this time, Jungeun has no idea how this sentence will end.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” Jungeun says tersely and all too abrupt, obvious, even, but she can’t handle another blow to her weakening train wreck of emotions, splintering in every which direction. Five sets of eyes look at her as if maybe, they can see the gaping hole in her chest the size of Jinsol’s fist that Jungeun tries so hard to conceal, even from herself. “Sorry, I’m just—I’m feeling kind of disgusting from practice.”

“Didn’t you already take a shower half an hour ago?” Sooyoung asks and lowers her spoon with a clatter.

“That was just a quick rinse, I was too lazy,” Jungeug’s shrug is stiff. She slowly backs out of the living room and feigns nonchalance, scrunching her face in pretend distaste. “I think I can smell myself.”

The way Jiwoo’s eyes soften when their gazes connect from across the living room makes her feel pitiful in a pathetic way, and she bites her tongue to hold back her admonishments. She doesn’t need a pity party.

“Okay, but—” Jiwoo is quick to start but hesitates on what she’s trying to say, masking her dismal expression behind something much more reticent. Jungeun can practically see the apology on her tongue. “Make it quick because we’re having a movie night tonight.”

“Jungeun can choose the movie,” Haseul pauses in the middle of folding Kahei’s t-shirt to smile in her direction. “So hurry up in the shower.”

“And think of a good movie that isn’t _Interstellar,”_ Sooyoung teases. “You’ve watched it a million times already.”

When Jungeun retreats into the bathroom and presses her back against the door with her eyes screwed shut, she heaves out a strangled, quivered sigh and presses her palms roughly against the sockets of her eyes. Jiwoo’s voice, loud and clear, seeps past the safety of the door seconds later, like a siren even over the roar of the shower sprinkling to life, and she doesn’t quite understand.

“We should be more careful with our words next time.”

Jungeun runs a calloused hand down her face until the stinging behind her eyes eases and yanks her shirt over her head for the second time that day. She’s thinking of Studio Ghibli films with heat on her back to drown out the thoughts of Jinsol’s hands tasting skin more delicate, more supple than the slight firmness of hers. She scrubs hard at her arms to try and forget the way Jinsol had touched her with the company of her pretty hands, the same way those palms bandaged her bleeding heart only to tear them away.

In retrospect, Jinsol had been returning to the dorms just before sunrise, and it leaves Jungeun hollow with an empty void now that she knows the reason behind Jinsol slipping out of the dorms and out of Jungeun’s reach, meeting guys whose name Jungeun doesn’t even know when she's not looking at Jungeun with profanities and an ocean of _why’s._

These are the nights Jungeun finds most difficult to grasp onto sleep, wide awake with heavy breathing until the click of the front door unlocking reassures her of Jinsol’s safety. It’s easier and not so palpably distant in her sleep when she can imagine a world where Jinsol’s smile belongs to hers, where Jungeun doesn’t have to spend hours stopping herself from calling Jinsol on the phone only to beg her to come home. It’s easier when Jungeun doesn’t have to think about Jinsol searching for home in someone else’s hands when home should be here, right here, in her arms.

Jungeun steps out of the bathroom with steam breathing down her neck and says, “Let’s watch something with a happy ending.”

-

Later when Jungeun falls asleep halfway through the movie with her head pillowed on Haseul’s thigh, the sound of sneakers squeaking on the floor barely pulls her awake by the shoulders, chasing her to the world between reality and dreams. Jiwoo’s head is pillowed against her stomach, and somewhere on the couch are the younger ones.

“You guys watched a movie together?” She hears Jinsol whisper, toeing off her shoes.

“Yeah,” Haseul answers above her. She’ll be the only one to catch the end of the movie. “Jiwoo’s suggestion. How was going out?”

“Text me next time so I can join you guys,” Jinsol says, and there is nothing bitter about it, only syllables to replace the very slight feeling of neglect. “Going out was… refreshing. Went to this new barbeque place next to the karaoke. We should all go when we have time.”

“Definitely,” Haseul says and throws her head back at the thought of food. “We haven’t had barbeque in forever.”

“That’s why we need to go,” Jinsol says quietly, words lilting towards the end in enthusiasm. Jungeun hears Jinsol’s shuffling feet as she retreats towards the direction of her bedroom. “Anyway, I’m going to bed now, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

But Haseul stops her almost as though she’d expected it, and Jungeun knows Jinsol is as frozen in place as she is.

“Hey, Jinsol?” Haseul whispers, a little louder this time above the volume of the movie, but impossibly softer. The hand resting on Jungeun’s shoulder tightens in a way that Jinsol cannot see. “Don’t let this tear the two of you apart, whatever _this_ is.”

“I don’t—”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me,” Haseul says, sadder than Jungeun has ever heard her voice fall. “I don’t know who’s at fault here, but we all know Jungeun isn’t the best at dealing with her troubles and emotions, and as much as you show yours, you’re not the best at it either. Just, look out for each other, okay? Whatever happened between you two, don’t forget that you used to make each other smile the biggest.”

“I—” Jinsol stutters out but shuts her mouth. “I don’t think Jungeun will let me anymore. Look out for her for me.”

“What makes you think that way?” Haseul says with so much confusion behind the question. There’s too much she doesn’t know.

Jinsol lets out a breathy laugh that’s anything but blithe, and Jungeun feels the words claw wounds at her chest. Jinsol’s voice was never meant to sound so lost.

“I wish I knew too, Haseul.”

-

It’s a learning experience when Jungeun comes to understand that one heartbreak in LOONA meant twelve, like a line of dominoes knocked down in quick succession after the first teeters off kilter. It catches everyone off guard when they receive the news announcing the start date of Haseul’s hiatus on the most mundane Wednesday night, so sudden and astounding that neither Jungeun nor the others will ever forget the way it almost tore them all apart.

It’s almost habitual how Haseul is always the first person to come to their minds when things went wrong, or when Yerim couldn’t make a sunny-side-up without breaking the yolk, when Yeojin needed someone to help her with freshman physics in between schedules, when Chaewon almost blew the entire kitchen up from overheating the oven, when Hyunjin carelessly sliced off a tiny part of her finger with a fruit knife, when Jungeun was deprived of motivation and needed a shoulder to cry on. 

Jungeun had spent a crucial point in her life observing Haseul being the image of a perfect leader, and it’s almost second nature by now to call out _Haseul unnie_ because her name promises a sense of relief and reassurance, a gentle remark ensuring them that storms don’t stay forever, but it feels like they’ve been taking this gifted angel for granted so much they forgot about the fact that sometimes, the ones who seek comfort in salvaging others’ pain are the ones who are voiceless and in need of a helping hand.

So when Kahei breaks the news to them with carefully thought-out words, “Haseul is moving out of the dorms to take a break from activities starting next week,” everyone is shocked into a stilled silence that stretches on until they can hear a clash and red marks dented on the kitchen floor—courtesy of Heejin for dropping Sooyoung’s pot of laboriously perfected kimchi stew right on the wooden flooring.

The front door creaks open just then, eleven heads turning to the sound of shoes squeaking against the floor and shuffling of thick jackets as protection against the unforgiving cold of January. Haseul pokes her head out from the doorway and directs them a glance that looks so apologetic but content at the same time—Haseul had always found solace in the warmth that their dorm offers, Jungeun knows this because that’s exactly what Haseul had told her one day, that one missing member would make the place too big and empty, and that their group is only one when all twelve pieces of puzzles are fit into the curves of each other.

It’s ironic, the way Haseul had said those words but ended up being the one who fell out of the picture because she didn’t know how to call for help during times when she needed it the most. It’s a thorny tendril that draws blood on the heart of Jungeun’s palm, it stings and burns and it makes her so incredibly angry because how could she have not noticed? 

Heejin is the first one to break off from the group gathered in the kitchen, sauntering up to Haseul with careful footsteps. She stops when she’s just an arm length away from Haseul, her figure towering over the older girl, yet she looks so unbelievably small.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Heejin starts, voice cracking ever so slightly at the first few words that spewed out of her mouth from looking at Haseul’s remorseful smile.

“Hey, don’t worry about me, I’m okay,” is all Haseul says.

“You always say that,” Heejin’s breath accelerates with each syllable that comes out broken and maybe with a hint of anger. She glances down at the bag in Haseul’s hands that carries bottles of pills from the hospital, and her eyes stay where they are when she mutters, “But when are you really okay?”

Haseul follows her gaze, and she places a reassuring arm on Heejin’s shoulder instead of trying to hide the artificial bottles of bitterness, but it does the complete opposite of what it should.

“Shit,” Heejin’s expression twists into something awful before she crosses the little gap between them to bury her face into Haseul’s shoulder, her back quivering in sync with chokes of helpless sobs.

Both of Haseul’s hands go around to wrap Heejin’s slim figure into a hug, and Jungeun can practically feel the violent tremors travelling along the invisible string of Haseul’s tight-knit resolve, the way it threatens to snap the effort she put into repeating _it’s okay’s_ over _it’s okay’s_ throughout the years of witnessing each other’s lowest of lows and sharing the highest of highs. With each step backward that the rest of them took alone, Haseul took two steps forward, carrying the weight of eleven others as she went until she’s left with nothing but bleeding scratches that will no longer heal.

Kahei stands beside them to put a hand on Heejin’s back, rubbing up and down in hopes that it’d somehow put her back together again. Hyunjin and Yeojin zoom past the kitchen to squeeze into the non-existent space between their pressed bodies, with their heads pointed down to conceal the way Haseul’s pain had stabbed mercilessly into their chest.

Beside Jungeun, Sooyoung’s eyes are glittering with salt, but the hard line of her eyebrows and the tight fists at her sides tells Jungeun that she’s willing everything in herself to stay strong for the group where Haseul had lost footing along the dark path. Her shoulders are shivering with each shallow breath that escapes her, and somewhere behind Jungeun is Jiwoo, silent tears rolling off her cheeks as the scene unfolds, and Yerim, who looks like an extinguished flame. Chaewon and Hyejoo’s hands are tightly intertwined like two terrified children, and the way Jinsol’s bottom lip trembles, thin frame flinching with each sob that rings through the dorm like gunfire, makes Jungeun’s heart heavy beneath her rib cage and “please” die out in her throat.

“For once, Haseul, be okay for yourself, not for us,” Sooyoung breathes, voice thick with tears as she forces them down with gritted teeth. “You can’t just shoulder everything alone and expect us to be okay when it takes a toll on you because that’s not teamwork, that’s _selfish_ —seeing you hurt yourself hurts us just as much.”

The room goes silent, an eerie void dragged on by the humming of the heater and quiet sobs filling up the remaining space, and the loudest of them all is twelve hearts coordinated in perfect sync, losing grip on strength and shattering into pieces around them in black and white, all the colours gone.

“Damn it,” Sooyoung curses, before bringing an arm up to cover the sudden burst of tears cascading down her cheeks, and they end up staining her sleeves until there are no more dry spaces left for it to absorb.

And Haseul, well, she never made things easier for everyone when she leaves the dorm with a reawakening goodbye, but the way she pulls each of them into a bruising hug is more than words will ever say. Jungeun watches with gentle eyes when Sooyoung hesitantly accepts Haseul’s hand and crashes their chests together like nothing had ever changed, regretful smile stretched across her face as Jinsol wraps arms around both of their shoulders with Jiwoo following suit until they are all one collective group hug surrounding Haseul and her choked sobs tumbling apologies over apologies from her mouth.

That night, Jungeun goes to bed with a hollow gap in her chest, that one puzzle piece falling out and letting the cold air waft in, and she falls asleep hanging on to Haseul’s words which is the holographic replacement to the missing piece.

-

Jungeun can’t stop thinking about Jinsol’s hands.

She doesn’t think she’s ever wanted to burn anything to memory as much as this, the feeling of soft hands imprinting her like oily fingerprints on clear glass, palms still freshly melting along her skin and sending shivers down every inch of her body. Body, poised resiliently around the memory that Jungeun still tastes Jinsol’s soft little moans on her bottom lip. And if she could replace all of her textbooks with Jinsol’s gentle hands, she wouldn’t have failed high school geography with Jinsol mapping her out like she’s traveled the world twice.

She spends even more time at the studio to avoid the suffocating mess she’d gotten herself into and finds solace in burning herself out until her muscles are sore from exhaustion, laughter bubbling in her throat from how weak her legs feel in the aftermath when Sooyoung shoves her on the way out, forcing her to latch onto doorways to hold herself upright. It helps that she’s knocked out like a light the second her head hits the pillow on nights like these because Jungeun is so awfully tired of losing sleep over the thought of losing Jinsol when she isn’t doing anything to stop it. It’s easier when she’s dreaming and swept up in fake realities, devoid of any commitments that the actual reality demanded.

But tonight is an exception where the heat of her dreams had bled her into consciousness, reminding her just how sweet Jinsol’s lips felt against her and how rebellious it made her want to be to devour them again. She turns the knob of the shower all the way to the left until the water is hot enough to burn her skin and seep beneath the surface to numb all of her insides. Boiling hot water hitting her face and body during untimely times at night seems to be the only way out now.

When she steps out of the shower, her skin is glowing red all over, a sense of itch and pain slowly settling in and making her hiss violently at the offended parts. She hastily stuffs her pajamas on and reaches out over to the bottle of lotion sitting at the edge of the sink to apply something cool on the burns, too wound up in her need for relief that she misses the sound of the bathroom door pushing open with Jinsol peeking her head in with tired eyes.

“Jungeun? What are you—”

Jungeun jumps and feels her heart leap to her throat, moving with shaky hands to tuck her arms into the long sleeves of her shirt. “Have you ever heard about _knocking?”_

“Sorry,” Jinsol says, eyes trained on the part where Jungeun had covered up her arms. “I didn’t—sorry, I just saw the bathroom light on for awhile when I went to get some water a few minutes ago. I just wanted to see if everything’s okay.”

Jungeun doesn’t say anything back, just closes her eyes and presses a palm to her forehead, other hand still desperately trying to conceal the redness in her sleeves. She wants nothing more than to vanish into a million tiny particles without any recollection of letting Jinsol see this violent side of her, but Jinsol doesn’t seem to get the hint and steps inside the bathroom, closing the door behind her and quietly pads towards Jungeun’s stiff figure.

“Hey,” she starts, moving closer until there’s little space separating them in this cramped bathroom. Jungeun doesn’t move the hand from her head until Jinsol reaches forward to pull it away and takes it into her own, Jungeun relenting and opening her eyes. “What happened to your hands?”

“Allergies,” Jungeun mumbles with her head down and misses the way Jinsol eyes her with suspicion because Jinsol would probably be the first one to know of her health conditions if she ever had one, given all the time they spent together all these years, which, in her medical record, says none. 

Jinsol doesn’t let go of her hand, her thumb swiping over the burnt skin so gently like she’s afraid of causing any more pain than it already is in. Jinsol’s touches are still as electric as Jungeun remembers them to be, and lost words immediately rise up her throat that doesn’t quite make it out of her mouth, lodged in the concave of her heart with guilt roped around it to restrict its attempt to break free. 

Everything about the way Jinsol looks right now under the unsaturated white fluorescent makes Jungeun’s heart clench tightly in her chest, and she finds herself twisting free, linking her fingers with Jinsol’s in between their bodies, and then, because she can’t physically contain herself anymore, she kisses her.

The kiss is different, more purposeful, more urgent. Jinsol straightens up to her full height, crowding closer, delicate fingers dipping into Jungeun’s wet hair. Jungeun presses back eagerly, one hand sliding to the back of Jinsol’s neck, the other securely intertwined with Jinsol’s. Her skin is covered in goosebumps, probably from the shower, although Jungeun likes to think it might have to do with a little more than that.

Jinsol still remembers exactly how to kiss her, and Jungeun still responds like a fool in love, each press of Jinsol’s lips igniting an explosion of stars behind the darkness of her eyelids. Jinsol tastes of mint and candy and Jungeun drowns in how easily their lips slot together, at once familiar and exhilarating, and there’s something about the way she is gripping Jinsol’s hand like she’s afraid of letting go makes tonight more emotionally charged than the other.

There’s a rough desperation in her touches that wasn’t all there before, like she wants to press every confession her heart can profess onto the smooth skin of Jinsol’s lips. She hopes Jinsol is needy enough to not notice the way she’s holding with the last of her resolve. The wall of the bathroom is cold against Jungeun’s back with Jinsol hovering over her like this, and the uncomfortably small space of the bathroom forces them to press impossibly closer into each other.

It isn’t enough, yet it’s too much, feeling the familiar warmth of Jinsol that she'd been aching to sink into for countless of nights, and Jungeun breathes harsh against Jinsol’s teeth in puffs that she hopes whoever Jinsol is seeing will taste when he leans in to kiss her. It’s in this moment that Jungeun forgets to not be selfish and takes Jinsol for her own. 

She kisses Jinsol so hard that she knocks a tiny gasp out of Jinsol's throat, the muffled sound tumbling down Jungeun's tongue. She pulls Jinsol’s plush bottom lip between her teeth, bites down hard enough to draw blood when Jinsol lets out a surprised, half-pained, half-pleasured whimper, and opens her heart for the first time in years.

_“Why are you still seeing him when you have me?”_

The words slip vehemently through Jungeun’s teeth before she can rethink it, and she registers Jinsol’s shocked expression, colored with so much pain and confusion that she knows an apology will never fix, the image branding deep within her memory and rendering her breathless.

“What?” Jinsol says, a little out of breath.

Jungeun looks away and reminisces in the few seconds that their hands are still clasped before Jinsol yanks them apart.

“Why?” Jungeun says. “Am I not—”

“You’re just gonna accuse me of pushing you away when all you’ve been doing is running?”

Jungeun bites her tongue, and Jinsol pulls away completely.

“You shove me out of your life without telling me why, then you turn around and make me the bad person?” Jinsol says, she finally says, voice shaky and loud as she steps back from their close proximity. There’s a trickle of blood forming on her bottom lip. “Jungeun, you can’t just—fuck you, okay?”

“I’m not making anyone the bad person here,” Jungeun bites, watching as Jinsol springs to her feet. “You sneak out with him every night. Isn’t home enough? Aren’t we enough?” _Am I not enough?_

“I don’t think you have the right to tell me about what I choose to do every night,” Jinsol growls and opens the door to the bathroom, and Jungeun watches as another dream, another sanctuary for safekeeping bleeds into reality. “I knew this was a mistake.”

“Then why did you do it?” Jungeun follows after her. She finds herself not caring that they’re arguing in the corridor now. “If it’s such a mistake, why do you kiss me like you want it?”

When Jinsol turns around to look at her, there are crystal tears dusting her long eyelashes and threatening to fall. “Did you ever just think for one fucking second in that dense, little mind of yours that maybe I do want it?”

“Don’t give me that,” Jungeun refutes with a scoff, hands tightening into fists. “Not when another guy is in the picture.”

Jinsol scoffs right back at her. “Joke’s on you, Jungeun, because I go out every night to get away from _you._ I go out just for a breath of air because being close to someone who pushes me miles away, every single day, hurts me so much that I can’t think straight. And you don't even know that because all you can focus on is how I’m busy with someone else when I can’t even deal with myself, when I spend hours until sunrise at the Han River on a bench alone because you stopped caring.”

“Hyunjin and the others said you were with—”

“You have a mouth, Jungeun, why didn’t you ask me?” Jinsol cries. “Why won’t you just talk to me?”

Her voice echoes through the dorm, and Jungeun feels her throat close in on her.

“God, you’re a real asshole, you know?” Jinsol’s voice trembles. “You’re so wound up in your own feelings to even notice how hard I’m holding on to us.”

Jinsol turns to grab her jacket, forearm coming up to wipe away angry tears streaking her cheeks that roll off her chin each time she blinks. Jungeun doesn’t stop her when she reaches for the door.

“I’m so tired of crying over you, Jungeun,” Jinsol breathes thickly. “A broken friendship shatters two hearts, not one. So don’t ever think that I’m not hurting as much as you are.”

The sound of the door slamming shut finds Jungeun’s heart crumbling at her feet in a thousand tiny pieces. She doesn’t reach down to pick them up.

-

Jinsol returns to the dorm at nearly five in the morning the following night, and her feet padding the floor echoes louder than Jungeun’s heartbeat pounding in her ears—this is how she breaks.

The constrained wave of tears she’s been holding back comes crashing down on her all at once, shattering the last remains of her rudderless ship and scattering her across the ocean’s currents, streaking down her cheeks in violent lines as they pool against her neck in salty puddles. 

The way her chest shakes with muffled, silent sobs feels a lot like asphyxiation, a mouthful of sapless confessions and stodgy epiphanies that do not scream hallelujah, the ones that she has kept on the back burner all these years, finally boiling over the edge and spurting noisily in the halls of the empty canals leading straight to her heart. The fist she presses against her mouth is a futile attempt to stop her bottom lip from trembling, her chattering teeth from biting her own tongue, eyebrows threading together as she feels the last of her resolve shatter in ultimate surrender.

It’s so unfair, she thinks, placing someone as beautiful as Jinsol in the center of her life and expecting her to not fall in love, to not yearn for her warmth that knew just how to fix her back together after a cold rainy day. Jungeun never really believed in fate, but crossing paths with someone that filled the gaps of her body and the spaces in her mind like the sun against the horizon felt anything but coincidental, had to be pre-destined like the divine shine of Jinsol’s smile lighting up every shadow of her mind and makes her a believer.

But she didn’t expect to end up walking along this poorly lit path with nothing but a weak candle to guide the way, or to unwillingly fall into something that threatened to tear everything inside of her apart, a cannibalistic battle of dreams devouring dreams to be on top.

The sound of her wet and unstable breathing fills the room like liquid, and it’s the first time since moving in that Jungeun thinks there isn’t enough space for the sounds to escape. She inhales deeply to stop herself from breaking, though she already has with nothing left to hold her together, no craft glue or bandages of the see-through kind, and her breath trembles in jerking, forceful succession much like the inconsistent rhythm of her heart. 

“Jungeun?” She hears from the bunk below her. Jungeun throws an arm over her eyes and berates herself for waking Kahei up like this. “You okay up there?”

Jungeun doesn’t answer, not because she’s ashamed but because she can’t, throat so full of sobs just waiting for the opportunity to escape the constriction in her windpipe, and nothing but a thin, taut line holding her back from breaking down completely.

“Hey, it’s going to be alright,” Kahei says, so softly. The words are gentle in a way that Jungeun knows Kahei understands the tears even without explanation. “Everything is going to be alright, Jungeun.”

But these are the words that snap all control she has left in her, one thread unwinding after another, and the first audible sob that leaves her mouth is too loud in her ears, too weak that Jungeun presses her arms tighter against her eyes and wills the tears to stop turning her fragile.

“Fuck it,” she cries, shaking her head and smearing the moisture.

The sounds of rustling sheets from another set of bunk bed tells Jungeun that Chaewon and Heejin are up, too, and Kahei lets the sound of Jungeun’s breaking heart consume them and only them for what feels like hours—an understanding, of sorts—and waits for Jungeun to cry it out of her system and into the clearing where it had been suppressed for so, so long, as she empties out of the toxic thoughts and emotions into the very walls of this room. Maybe then, it will finally feel like home in the same way the other dorms had become. 

Jungeun doesn’t know how long it’s been, lost in every sense including track of time with only the tears still warm and wet on her skin as an indicator, slowed down to a light stream tracing the sharp curves of her face. Her breathing is a stuttering mess, not graceful in the slightest, and there’s no orchestra playing this cacophony.

“Jungeun,” Kahei finally disturbs when Jungeun doesn’t sound as shaken. She thinks it’s already been an hour, two if she really thinks about it. “Jungeun, do you remember our concert, when Yeojin cried her heart out after causing Sooyoung’s injury because she thought she was a burden to all of us? How she forced herself to stay up three nights in a row at the studio because she felt so guilty and almost made us miss all of our interviews the morning after?”

Jungeun’s sniffle is a response enough of her acknowledgement.

“And remember when Jiwoo locked herself up in the recording room that one night to cry and refused to leave because she thought she wasn’t good enough to be part of us? She gave up on us for a little while because she was ashamed, but we convinced her to stay, and we convinced her to love herself. Remember that?” Kahei pauses, the hesitation a fleeting retrospection flashing through her sharp mind. “Humans make these decisions sometimes that are selfish, for the better of something bigger. Yeojin and Jiwoo did it because they love us.”

Jungeun recalls the memory, fresh as if it had happened only yesterday, the struggles that they all plummeted through with dainty, inexperienced hands at the beginning when the limelight was but a dim, flickering twinkle in the far distance. But Jungeun wouldn’t take any of it back, not even the days she’d almost given up right on the floor of the studio, or the times she looked into the mirror and hated her own reflection. Those struggles were the very reason that broke her into her own skin where she’d felt unavailingly disjointed before, until she could smile at her reflection and not recoil with a grimace.

“Haseul—she’s a different one, isn’t she?” Kahei’s breathy laugh that follows does not exude happiness or anything that a laugh is comprised of, nothing but jittery air backed with remorse. “But Jungeun, I want you to understand something. Haseul couldn’t hold herself up not because she was selfish like Sooyoung had said, but because she was selfless, and that’s why it didn’t work. Haseul isn’t selfish, but the way she’s loving us is.”

Jungeun tugs the collar of her shirt up to wipe her damp eyes, nose plugged and chest shaking from the aftermath as she carefully takes in Kahei’s words and every exhale Heejin and Chaewon make from silently listening.

“But that’s the thing, I don’t want to be _selfish,”_ Jungeun finally forces out, voice scratchy and withering from sobs but so unbearably quiet. “I don’t want to start something that could potentially ruin everything we worked so hard for.”

“But everyone needs a love that’s selfish, because that means you care,” Kahei says, voice above a quiet hum and cautious in this frail air. “It’s such an integral part of us, being selfish. We wouldn’t be human otherwise, you know? It means you want to breathe someone until you can’t breathe anymore, that you look at that person in a way that the world shouldn’t, can’t, and that’s okay. That’s okay because, it means—she’s the only one you want, right? Love was never meant to be easy, Jungeun, that’s why it’s called falling.”

The silence after the last word of Kahei’s sentence dissipates throughout the room, deafening in a way that lingers in Jungeun’s ear like a dull ring of muffled roaring. Her voice is the only thing that slices through before Jungeun slips into an exhausted, tear-stained numbness with Kahei’s words awakening something deep within her, a restored sense of purpose that will make tomorrow’s morning a new one where it had felt recycled and routine for so long. 

She knows, past all the wintery tears and aching throughout her body, that this is the beginning to relearning the meaning of selfishness, until it was equal parts positive where it had become one of her many demons.

“You can’t stop if you never start.”

Jungeun falls asleep to the feeling of dry tears painting her cheeks with saltwater at near sunrise and wakes up in the same state. She doesn’t think twice about it when she crosses the threshold from the living room to the opposite bedroom, slipping into the quiet space in search of Jinsol with her clumsy hands. Her fingers clash into hard surfaces until they find the soft skin of Jinsol’s cheeks, sunlight dancing across her closed eyelids with tender loving like it did every single day, the same way Jungeun had only ever dreamed of doing under the same sun with the same girl, and almost, if not more, with the same kind of loving. 

The feeling of Jinsol’s even breaths ghosting years of affection against her wrist raises goosebumps on the skin and sends a chill of nostalgic, memory-ridden shivers down the column of her spine when she cups Jinsol’s cheek to map out a million apologies she will never have the confidence in saying. So instead.

“You’re the sun that sets beneath the line, and I’m the ocean drowning to keep you.”

_3\. Astronomical Twilight_

It’s one day into the vacation, and Jinsol replies four hours after Jungeun had sent the text.

_i miss you_

_you can’t just say something like that jungeun_

Cheongju is just as Jungeun had left it last: reminiscent, calm, and blue, a constant no matter how much she’s changed. She spends the first day back retouching the breeze of the park she had grown up knowing, and the way it ruffles her hair in wispy, lukewarm gusts is just as welcoming of an embrace as her mom’s only hours before. The field gives her succor from the whirlwind she’d spiraled into, and Jungeun finds herself pacing under the shades of giant trees until the sun is but at orange crescent kissing the shadows complementary.

She strays from her usual path and paces through the town market on the way back home, basking in the fresh smell of fruits and the chattering of residents looking to purchase some to hydrate themselves. There’s the occasional tourist, a younger couple from Taiwan with choppy enough korean that Jungeun understands the chinese bits more, but does not stop to translate. 

She gives out her autograph to an old lady with a kindly smile and timeworn hands, no longer a generic imitation of her mother but a scrawl of her own, _for my daughter,_ she had said, _she loves your voice._ Jungeun wonders if she might have mistaken her for Jinsol and leaves without correcting her.

The next morning is much less motivated and much more stale. Jungeun wakes up with too much sun in her eyes, the backs of her eyelids scarlet instead of black, and the complete opposite of the dorms where Chaewon had cleverly hung her jacket over their window to shield the incessant light from filtering through. But here, in the youth of her room, Jungeun is bathed in a warm, unhurried glow that wakes her up three hours earlier than she’d planned on sleeping in. And even after growing up in these walls, she has never grown accustomed to the harsh mornings that strip away the sleep from her bones before noon.

Jungeun doesn’t go back to sleep like she’s used to doing back in Seoul. But vacation time meant time away from the suffocating chaos that is idol life, a time to breathe at her own pace. And with more time meant more room for Jungeun to dwell on her thoughts in acute detail, no excuse or clear escape to avoid stringing them all apart into infinite scenarios of overthinking. 

She is reminded of Jinsol in everything she does and does not do, and the broken expression she’d witnessed the night Jinsol walked out on her is a video behind her eyes playing in endless loops, so sober as incited by Jungeun’s bare hands. The members hadn’t so much asked about the fight since then, not yet, and Jungeun is thankful for the space.

But as unforgiving of a morning as this, Jungeun wakes up with Kahei’s words beating hard against her skull as reality sets in like a cold blizzard, and it’s the recollection of those reassurances that makes her do it. Jungeun could be spontaneous when she wants to be, Haseul had called it _impulsive,_ and without the luxury or burden of second, third, fourth thoughts, she grabs her phone from under the pillow and does the unthinkable with a spur of temporary determination:

She texts Jinsol. Yet as soon as the message sends, a few seconds delayed with the service at this end of the house only garnering one measly bar of signal, regret sets in immediately and floods her to the throat. She fits her eyes across the three short words, I miss you, over a dozen times, once out loud, as if to fully absorb the weight of what she’s done with every ounce of awareness that mistake or not, she can’t take this back. She can’t take any of it back, dragging Jinsol down with her when she'd thought she was alone.

The words look foreign staring back at her, simple, almost emotionless, yet they hold the weight of a thousand moons and all the complexities. The white letters are ugly and bleak against the blue of the text bubble, and it makes something churn uncomfortably inside of her that she swallows down hard until her throat is gritty sandpaper. The text, she concedes, was done entirely on impulse and not spontaneity, too afraid that she’d back out that she did it without rational thinking, and now she wants nothing more than to fling her phone off and never retrieve it back again.

Run away, as Jinsol so vocally shouted.

Jinsol’s response comes later in the afternoon when Jungeun is drifting in and out of slumber, phone placed at the end of her bed to alleviate her urge to send more messages disregarding the first, maybe construct a convincing enough excuse that the text was never meant for Jinsol. But really, Jungeun is just sick of fucking up.

She blinks her groggy eyes open and stretches her leg down to hook her foot around the phone, dragging the rectangular body along the sheets and snatching it up with hesitant hands. Her bones are fatigue with sleep and weariness, but it’s nothing compared to the rush of nerves that start coursing through her veins like electricity. She slides her thumb across the screen, _you can’t just say something like that jungeun,_ glaring back at her like a sharp spear. 

But Jinsol’s right, of course she is. Jungeun is back to square one, selfishly throwing words like _I miss you_ as though she wasn’t the one that pushed Jinsol away until she burned to have her back and rekindle her extinguished flame.

_i know, but_

_can i call you?_

She doesn’t know if it’ll be harder or easier, not being able to read Jinsol’s face while talking and instead picturing them against the walls of her room, but it’s better than nothing at all with the confrontation slotting in sooner than later. This, Jungeun comes to understand, will never be worth losing Jinsol over. _Don’t forget that you used to make each smile the biggest,_ Haseul had once said.

Her phone buzzes.

_okay_

Jinsol picks up after four rings that echo through her ear like a reverberating ticking time bomb in the quiet of her sun soaked room, waiting to split her breath in half the second Jinsol’s voice kisses her ear.

“Hello?”

It sounds exactly like the last time they’d smiled at each other without it hurting, and maybe this is harder than she thought, not being able to talk face to face, but Jungeun knows like a familiar habit that Jinsol has her bottom lip tucked between her teeth on the other end of the line, not to bite back a smile, but to bite back pain, a heart-wrenching image that Jungeun tries not to pain in detail.

“Hi,” Jungeun says, tilting her head back against the pillow. She sinks into the cushion and vainly hopes to be engulfed into a place where it doesn’t hurt to fall.

There’s a long pause, and then, “Hey.”

The silence between them stretches taut, almost elastic. Jungeun throws her arm over her eyes to shield them from the sun. There are so many things she wants to say, lingering on the tip of her tongue, so ready to roll off yet not at all.

“What are you doing?”

There’s a rustling on the other end and the distant sound of a bark.

“I’m walking my brother’s puppy around the neighborhood,” Jinsol says. It’s guarded, careful, and Jungeun knows there’s words just waiting to trickle from Jinsol’s mouth, too. “You?”

“Laying down,” Jungeun says and shifts the phone closer to herear to bask in the low hum of Jinsol’s voice. She has missed it so much, this close.

“It’s almost five in the afternoon.”

“I know,” Jungeun says, the end lilting with soft laughter. “Just, thinking about lots of stuff.”

“Oh,” is all Jinsol says.

“Hey, Jinsol,” Jungeun says, abruptly yet so hesitant that she’s afraid the words will fall through and never make it into the clearing in time before she’s retracting the words right from the air. “About the other night—”

“Jungeun, have you ever snuck out of the house when your parents are sleeping?”

Jungeun’s voice catches in her throat. “What?”

“You know, like, crawl out of the window or slip out through the front door past midnight. When everyone is asleep?”

“Um, no,” Jungeun replies, all confrontation fizzing out. She’s standing bare in the clearing without anything to protect her. “My parents were really strict when I was a kid.”

“Not surprised,” Jinsol says quietly, mostly to herself. “I did it all the time when I was young, younger, not that I hated home or anything. It’s just, it’s exciting, you know? Taking risks.”

“Yeah?” Jungeun turns to lay on her side, removing her hand and balancing the phone over her ear lazily. She presses her nose into her grey blanket. All she is thinking about is Jinsol’s hands in hers.

“Yeah,” Jinsol says, withdrawn and reminiscent. “Some nights I’d end up on the outskirts of Seoul in this deserted park with a sky full of stars, five dollars in my pocket and banana milk in my hand, just laying in the damp grass until the stars were painted at the back of my eyelids. Sometimes, I sneak out with my brother and we’d end up getting lost and would have to call my parents to come pick me up. Real stupid of me, and of course they were pissed, but it was that initial step that made all the difference. It made it worth the adrenaline of the unknown because it was never as bad as I always thought it would be,” There’s a brief pause, and Jungeun imagines Jinsol’s far off expression. “If someone asked if I would still do it all over again, the answer is yes, I would.”

“But what if,” Jungeun starts, curling her fingers into the sheets and watching the fabric fill the gaps of her hand. “What if the risk ends up hurting those around you?”

“Well that’s the thing, isn’t it?” Jinsol says. “We never really know what the end will look like, so we shouldn’t really dwell on what we can’t see. What’s right in front of us is more than enough, why put that to waste?”

And Jungeun, who has quite never known where she was headed except the vastness of the sky, says, “I’m—I’m so lost, Jinsol.”

But Jinsol has always been a glimmering star in the dark of her sky. “You’ll find your way if you stop to look around.”

The phone feels cold against her cheek, but Jinsol’s voice sounds warmer than the sunshine filtering through her window. Smooth, like an untouched river in the middle of paradise, just waiting for stones to skip it into motion. The ground doesn’t shake beneath her, the eyebags don’t disappear from under her eyes, and the pain in her chest doesn’t go away completely. But it’s better, all of this, it’s better. Jungeun is going to make it right again, one stepping stone at a time.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry, Jinsol.”

And Jinsol breathes, “It’s okay.”

-

The days following their fleeting vacation sweeps them up in a hurricane of preparations for the new album with everyone high-strung on stress and anxiety. The overview to determine the final songs for the album is only a few short hours away, and Jungeun finishes her recordings just before seven in the morning before trudging her way back to the dorms with relief and satisfaction in her burning eyes and a lightness on her shoulders that doesn’t feel so heavy.

Seeing Jinsol for the first time after their phone call had been awkward, to say the least, but it was still a comforting familiarity that felt, always, like a breath of fresh air, a pair of worn shoes shaped to her liking over years of the same routine. Jinsol had smiled at her, more reclusive and small than it used to be, but Jungeun had smiled back in truth for the first time in forever. 

Everything did not go back to normal, in that one shared moment alone like she’d watched in the movies, but it was a start, a journey along a path she had already walked.

But Jungeun barely had the time to sort through it all before they were thrown back into the rapid routine of work, her thoughts, emotions, everything still hidden beneath the surface, like tucking her monsters under the bed to check on later. With an upcoming comeback in the near horizon, sleep was more scarce than ever with dance and vocal practices occupying the days in its entirety with concept and image management meetings at the side. Jungeun is just glad that they had gotten the music video and jacket shootings out of the way months in advance, lest they be worked to the bone before the comeback hand even began.

The walk back to the dorm is serene and still in a way only mornings in Seoul are, the smell of dewy moisture with a hint of city pollution and sewage tinting the air that eases her mind. Jungeun scuffs the bottoms of her shoes against the floor and slips inside the dorm with a yawning city at her back.

By now, she wouldn’t be surprised if the others were already awake for today’s scatter of an agenda, disturbed in fleeting hours of sleep with the first taste of dreams by their manager’s alarm clock of a voice. Someone is on the couch under a lump of blanket when jungeun shuts the door behind her to kick off her shoes, and she makes it as far as the kitchen counter before the head lifts off the armrest to reveal Jinsol’s half-opened, squinted eyes and messy bed head, barely awake enough that it takes her a few stagnant seconds to register Jungeun’s figure at the sink with a glass cup in her hand. 

Jinsol has probably only slept for a few short hours, so exhausted after her own recordings later today that she’d crashed right on the couch, too tired to even make it to the bedroom, running on nothing but sheer motivation to make this comeback a good one, just like Jungeun.

“Sorry, did I wake you up?” Jungeun whispers from the counter, running the faucet and filling her cup halfway.

“It’s fine,” Jinsol mumbles, voice raspy from sleep. She sits up and stretches her arms high over her head, sweater lifting halfway up to reveal her abdomen. Jungeun is thinking about the warm skin there and how they feel under her fingertips. “I just got home an hour ago, biological clock completely messed up.”

Looking at Jinsol in this morning light doesn’t change the recent past, no matter how beautiful she still looks—it doesn’t change that Jungeun had made those crystal eyes shed painful tears only a few weeks ago. She still feels the scorch of those lips and hands against her body like a burning fever coursing through her veins, still feels the throbbing ache of nearly ruining a friendship and the harrowing guilt from dragging Jinsol along into her descent. These regrets will never die. The difference is the gift of second chances, to stop cowardly running from things she didn’t understand in fears of getting hurt.

“Haseul stopped by when you were out last night,” Jinsol says, sauntering up to the counter with a yawn and sluggish feet, leaning her elbow on the surface and chin in the curve of her palm. “She made some food for us to bring to the meeting later.”

“It’s so strange,” Jungeun says, a wave of melancholy washing over her at the mention of Haseul. “It feels like nothing has changed, like she’s right here with us.”

“And it’ll stay that way,” Jinsol reassures her.

She looks like she’s about to fall asleep on the counter, face swollen from sleep. Jungeun does not doubt for one second that she would. And anyway, it wouldn’t be a first for one of them to fall asleep with their head piled on the counter in a drooling puddle of their own saliva. They’ve woken up to find each other sleeping in more random places than this.

Jinsol has one eye closed, the other barely open, and the way her bangs part to just barely reveal one of her eyebrows is a good look on her that Jungeun has missed observing without having to avert her eyes like a bad burn—Jinsol’s hair is a silky black now, and it reminds Jungeun of the times when they were just naive teenagers thrown into a harsh routine of practices with only each other to hold on to. Even in a half-awake state of disheveled appearance, Jinsol still makes her heart thud.

“What?” Jinsol mutters finally, opening both eyes just barely enough to meet Jungeun’s gaze. Jungeun looks away.

“Sorry, I spaced out,” Jungeun says, shaking strands of her hair to one side and out of her eyes. If they sleep now, they could still fit in at least another hour of rest that will be just enough to boost them through the meeting. “Gross, you’re drooling on the counter. Go to sleep, unnie.”

“Yeah,” Jinsol mumbles. “Good idea.”

Jungeun doesn’t move first and waits for Jinsol to retreat to the bedroom or back to the warm confines of her blanket cocoon on the couch. But when Jinsol straightens off the counter groggily, shrugging a shoulder to adjust the collar of her loose sweater, she does not turn to pace into her bedroom or pad to the couch. 

Instead, Jungeun watches with a fluttering stomach as Jinsol approaches her with steady steps until she’s only inches away and wraps her arms around Jungeun’s neck to bring their foreheads together. The gesture makes Jungeun instinctively hold her breath from the sudden closeness, her entire body flushing with heat, but this is something Jinsol used to always do, yet she still feels lightheaded and wrecked with tingles.

Jinsol’s lashes are so close that Jungeun thinks she might feel them tickling against her cheeks from where Jinsol nudges their noses together.

“Hey, Jungeun?” Jinsol whispers, and Jungeun inhales the words into her lungs like oxygen.

She says, “Yeah?”

It feels like forgiveness, the way Jinsol holds her tight in the circle of her arms. Jungeun wants to talk about apologies like it’s all she’s ever known, let the sorry’s trickle out of her mouth like downpour and soak Jinsol to the bone until she comes down with a cold. But Jungeun saves it for another time, when the moment isn’t a fragile mending of broken ties, a loose string threaded back into place. She presses in until close becomes closer, until her hair is tangled with Jinsol’s. She can taste the words more than she hears them, and it’s sweet, finally, without “bitter” preceding it.

“I missed you too.”

  
  


-

Every comeback begins with a blast of adrenaline that makes the delirium from no sleep, all work maintainable. When promotions finally set into motion, Jungeun feels a burst of energy course through her that is much reminiscent to that of their debut days, the pulses of galvanizing adrenaline akin to the feeling of experiencing first-times, and the rush is something she realizes she had missed from the months that followed their previous comeback. 

Jungeun figures this is what keeps artists and idols going, the excitement felt after releasing new material to share with the world, but this is undoubtedly her favourite, an album of personal pride where all of their members had fervently worked for until it became one of their own.

With the album released both online and offline, they had been honoured to see the songs doing well on the charts and selling so quickly physically, the general public receiving their hard work abundantly with the music video already garnering millions of views within the first few days.

“It’s our first sign of true success,” Heejin had said, smiling proudly at her phone. “This is where it all begins.”

Jungeun had called her mom on the day of the release, tucking herself into the laundry to perch atop the dryer, talking for hours and venting everything she’d pent up inside of her without restraint, finally, since the very beginnings of her childhood. Jungeun could practically feel her soft, loving expression on the other end of the phone responding in earnest to all of her remarks, trivial or abstruse, it didn’t matter because being in the company of her faraway daughter through a three hour phone call, she wouldn’t trade it for the world. She promised to call her the next day before she was ushered off to dance practice but went to sleep that night feeling weightless.

“Hey, where’s Jinsol?” Jungeun finds herself asking a very concentrated Yerim on her Nintendo Switch. The question feels like a nostalgic irony in her mouth after having spent so long training herself not to wonder about Jinsol’s whereabouts. The thing is that Jungeun never stopped wondering.

Yerim glances up at her then around the room. “I think she’s sleeping? She should be around here somewhere. Look under any coat piles or couch cushions.”

Jinsol, against all expectations, is not under any cushions or tucked under clothing mountains when Jungeun finds her, tucked into the space of the changing area and sleeping soundly on her side with Sooyoung’s jacket draped over her—Jinsol’s ridiculous tendency to sleep in cramped areas. The mat she’s lying on looks like it has minimal cushion, and Jungeun knows she’ll wake up with a terrible back pain even with only ten minutes on it.

Jungeun slips into the tight space above Jinsol’s head and leans back against the wall. These shorts make it difficult for flexible movement with the restricted elasticity of the fabric, and Jungeun silently curses the concept stylists for suggesting the idea of tight shorts about the thighs, “it’s cool and sexy,” they had said, but all she thinks is “fan’s fantasies”. Jinsol grumbles when Jungeun lifts her enough to slide her legs under, pillowing Jinsol’s head on her lap and off the napping mat.

“What’s going on?” She slurs tiredly but nuzzles against Jungeun’s thigh with her cheek. “Is it time to go on stage?”

“Not yet,” Jungeun answers around a breathy laugh, shifting to straighten her shorts and lightly jostling Jinsol’s head in the process. “You’re going to ruin your posture even more if you keep sleeping like this without a pillow.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jinsol mumbles instead. “It’s already bad anyways.”

“Sure,” Jungeun brushes her fingers through Jinsol’s bangs, pushing them away from her eyes. “That’s why I’m here.”

“And you feel like skin and bones,” Jinsol says, hand coming up to rest against her leg anyway and patting firm flesh. “But thanks, Jungeun.”

Jungeun threads her fingers through Jinsol’s silky tresses, playing with the newly dyed, black strands which is a contrast to her chestnut brown. “Hey, unnie?”

Jinsol hums, and Jungeun tousles the hair to one side and splays it against her shorts. “Are you nervous?”

“No,” Jinsol mumbles casually. “Are you?”

“A little bit,” Jungeun says, thumb coming out to smooth along an eyebrow. “It’s weird.”

“Don’t be,” Jinsol reassures, reaching up to grab the hand running through her hair. The feeling sends a burst of tingles up Jungeun’s arm, a reminder of how long it’s been since she last held Jinsol’s hand so simply without the complications. “Those fans out there, they’re family too. Just have fun, and we’ll be there with you every step of the way.”

Jungeun loves her fans, that much is certain, a budding appreciation that never ceased to diminish no matter how long the breaks in between promotions, only grows tenfold with each new day and performance. Jungeun lives for music, for the stage, but she wouldn’t be alive without the stars.

But this, the feeling of Jinsol’s hand twined with hers, clasped together and resting against her thigh just inches in front of Jinsol’s pretty lips, makes the nerves in her stomach cease entirely, replacing her flipping stomach with a calming, golden warmth like dawn. And it’s in these quiet moments that Jungeun finds it hard to believe she almost gave this up.

Jungeun waits until Jinsol falls back asleep, until the fluttering of her eyelashes against her thigh is replaced with labored breathing, and watches Jinsol hang the stars in the sky, press the cosmos in her hands, and engulf her in a sea of infinity.

  
  


-

Jungeun almost breaks her leg trying to maneuver her way across the dorm to Jinsol, Jiwoo, Hyunjin, and Yerim’s bedroom. She catches herself on the arm of the couch just at the last second and straightens up with a throbbing toe shooting waves of pain up her leg and curses under her breath to no one in particular. It feels like deja vu, but Jungeun yearns to renew the path with one of amended friendship and confrontation where it had been soaked with tears before. 

She needs to redo this.

With week one of promotions already complete, Jungeun knows she should be using up every minute for rest where they rarely got any, an even greater rarity to get rest in the comforts of their own beds and not in cramped vans. There’s a schedule in a few hours, and another one after that, yet all she is thinking about is nothing at all with her heart leading every step of the way.

It smells like popcorn and chocolate when she slips past the door into the partially lit room. Jungeun holds her breath the entire waltz over to Jinsol’s bed, only a few feet from Jiwoo’s mattress—it feels like an accomplishment when she gets there without waking her up. But Jungeun doesn’t allow herself time to think this through, it’s too late to give up now, and lifts the edge of Jinsol’s blanket to slide in beside the sleeping slump under the covers, face to face with her peaceful expression. 

When she settles down on the pillow, only then does Jinsol stir, eyes slowly blinking open to try and understand the blurry fragments of Jungeun’s impressionism of a face. Jinsol greets her with a sleepy smile and snuggles in close to press their foreheads together. All she says is, “Finally.”

And Jungeun finally, _finally,_ says, “Jinsol, I love you, and I’m sorry.”

Jungeun reaches up to cup her face just like she’d watched the sunlight do for so many years, fingers tracing each dip on the canvas of her cheekbones like a jealous lover. The way Jinsol stares back at her, hands pressed right over the space of her heart to feel each skip, makes her want to shatter so fragilely under her palms. She could’ve had this for so long—so long, if she hadn’t succumbed to fear.

“Jungeun,” Jinsol says softly and leans into the touch. “That apology is your biggest mistake.”

“But I am. I’m sorry,” Jungeun nudges their noses together, eyebrows threading. “So sorry because I love you so much, and I didn't want to lose you.”

“You should never have to apologize for loving someone, Jungeun. Never,” Jinsol slides her hand up until it’s wrapped around the back of her neck, fingers tangling in the soft tresses at her nape. “I’m not going anywhere,” she says, this time right up against the bow of Jungeun’s lips. “You would’ve known if you stopped running from yourself.”

Jungeun bites back another apology. “You weren’t supposed to go through all of that.”

“I thought you hated me,” Jinsol says through a breathy laugh that Jungeun feels at the back of her throat. “I spent so long trying to come up with reasons of what I had done wrong, but it’s harder that I couldn’t come up with any, so I started making up some of my own to hate you.”

“I’m never going to forgive myself,” Jungeun whispers, more exhale than words, jittery and unstable when they tumble out. “I’m never going to wake up without chasing forgiveness.”

Jinsol tangles their ankles together, and Jungeun, in return, searches for her hand under the covers and folds them together like they belong nowhere else but here. “As long as you stop waking up holding onto blame where it doesn’t need to be held.”

“I never wanted to hurt you on purpose,” Jungeun says, brushing the pad of her thumb over Jinsol’s eyelid with her freehand, right over the reflection of sunlight.

“I know.”

“I just—I don’t know, fuck, I still don’t know anything.”

“Then just love me,” Jinsol says quietly. And then she smiles, and Jungeun has lost reason. “Just love me, Jungeun, and I promise I’ll love you back.”

“Even after everything?”

“Even after always.”

Jungeun wants to feel bad that she can’t stop kissing Jinsol, like she’d been deprived of this oasis for so long, but she doesn’t feel an ounce of guilt because Jinsol’s lips are gentler, sweeter, no teeth and all symphonies plucking staccatos right on her heart. Jinsol tastes like sanctuary, and Jungeun’s lungs fall in love with her delicate breaths.

“I love you,” Jungeun whispers again, again, and again, right up against the hollow of Jinsol’s neck, against her cheekbones, against her eyelashes. “I love you.”

Jinsol’s replies exist in the form of soft kisses that brush like butterfly wings all along her skin, so light, but entirely there. And she can’t quite stop saying it, not even after the storm has fully stopped to wrap them in a blanket of new beginnings and fill all her shadowed spaces with a rainbow that had been harbored with the barren nothingness of doubt.

It’s the first time in a long time where Jungeun doesn’t grieve losing hours of sleep to force herself awake, long enough to witness magic dance across Jinsol’s face.

-

Still, Jungeun finds solace in dancing.

It’s nothing new, this hobby that has been lurking in the crevices of her joints since young, the way they sighed in blissful reverie whenever being exposed to physical exertion, first found in morning jogs, second in quality “bro time” with Sooyoung during the days she chased abs for the image and not the merit, and finally realized in overseas schedules that even if dancing has become part of her job now, it’s still something that her muscles itch to do once every, say, two days.

She does take pride in the fact that this hobby is far more beneficial than other hobbies she’d picked up over the years in multiple aspects that she can’t help but to latch on like it’s a tiny habit. On some days, it’s especially rewarding what with Jinsol not always being at her side, too busy for Jungeun to seek peace of mind against tasteful lips, and in turn, Jungeun discovers it to be the best alternative rigid with good music and occasional good company from Hyejoo and Heejin. 

It’s addicting, the rush she gets from dancing. Jungeun will admit to becoming a _lunatic who loves practice,_ as per Hyunjin’s comment, reveling in both the feeling of actively exhausting her muscles and the progress of them building her body line in definition. The frail, lanky Jungeun of debut’s past had been nothing but weak calves and clumsy hands, and she associates the time to her insecurities. It’s nice now that she can monitor their performances without the constant urge to frown at herself, confidence skyrocketing after pouring extra effort in practice, more so than anyone else in the group.

But Jungeun has been here for awhile. She’s straddling on three hours now, hair sticking to her sweaty forehead in a scattered disarray and body positively brimming with fatigue. Their schedule had thankfully ended early tonight, and Jungeun, unlike the others, had taken this advantage to escape for a much needed dance session where she’d been severely neglecting out of sheer unmotivated laziness the past few days. She’s sacrificing sleep to be here, but the tradeoff is worth it where she won’t feel so lethargic come daytime like she usually did.

She’s on her phone for the next music choice when the door to the studio slides open to reveal Jinsol’s familiar figure, clad in her usual baggy choice of clothes that had been swimming in the garments and swallowed up by her sweater and sweats. Comfortable in such a flawless way, and Jungeun is equal amounts envious as she is prideful.

“Haseul almost broke my ass today for making me clean the house,” Jinsol frowns as she weaves her way through the mirror, trudging up to Jungeun with nothing but a phone in hand. “God forbid I make it to the end of ‘So What’ promotions without breaking my back.”

Jungeun thumbs at the side of her phone connected to the audio system to lower down the volume. “Because you never _clean.”_

“I do,” Jinsol grumbles. “Just because I don’t wake up at five in the morning to organize the house like you always do doesn’t mean I don’t clean.”

“Hey, tell Haseul, not me,” Jungeun throws back with a shrug, and proceeds to eye her incredulously when she registers that Jinsol came empty handed. “Are you here for practice?”

“Maybe,” Jinsol starts, taking a tentative step forward, another one, until she’s leaning against the mirror and advancing closer to Jungeun, who watches with mirth from her spot. Jinsol rests her head against the glass. “Or maybe I’m here because I want to see you. Who knows?”

Jungeun crosses her arms and laughs. “Guess we’ll find out soon.”

“Very soon,” Jinsol nods, but Jungeun doesn’t move, and it adds to the sudden awareness of Jinsol’s face mere inches away with nothing but her own scent separating them. “What do you say about finishing up here for the night and heading back to the dorm with me? I told Kahei I’d take you home.”

“Sure,” Jungeun says, but still stays grounded on her spot. Jinsol, similarly, does not step back, almost challenging in her firmness.

But it doesn’t last too long, Jinsol having always been the more relinquishing one of the two who leans in to close the separating gap of air and restraint.

It’s been awhile since they kissed properly in upright orientations without the need to hurry or paranoia hung tauntingly above them, the previous, most recent times all transpiring in the cozy confines of Jinsol’s bed late into the night with the rest in the form of fleeting kisses in empty hallways or in the restroom during breaks. Yet unlike the complicated cycle of rushed kisses before, Jinsol kisses her like she’s got all the time in the world, full and slow with a content sigh that steals all the air right from Jugneun’s mouth, wanting nothing more than to engrave the lines of her lips into the caverns of her mind.

Jinsol moves to slot herself close to Jungeun, deepening the kiss with slanted lips as Jungeun winds her arms around her neck to pull her in, caging her against her warmth with nowhere to escape but closer. The small noises that escape Jinsol’s mouth fill the spacious air of silence and mixes with the wet sounds of kissing. Jungeun pulls back and gazes up with hooded eyes, their hot breaths tingling each other's lips.

“We can’t do this here,” she says, and Jinsol swipes the tips of their noses together, more out of affection than lust. “Someone will walk in.”

“One of the recording studios, then?” Jinsol says, cupping Jungeun’s face with her hands and pressing another kiss against her plush lips.

“I thought you were supposed to take me home,” Jungeun laughs, and Jinsol leans back with glistening eyes, grabbing Jungeun’s hand and dragging her somewhere which is definitely not the door to the exit. 

Jungeun always succumbs. Always.

“That can wait.”

-

“Unnie line’s turn to do the dishes tonight!”

Dinner had been a golden moment in a time with just enough sesame oil and pork belly to swallow the surrealness down. It had been celebratory, a meal in the company of the members only, prepared together after their first win in their careers. It’s an accomplishment of such high reverence that it’s almost entirely unbelievable, especially with Jiwoo’s punch-drunk question of, “Did we really win?”, that is all repetition and old enough to become habitual for tonight’s choice of dialogue. 

All of them had been in such a dazed regard, frayed with bliss to soften the edge that all Jungeun can register is the way her face hurts from laughing and smiling so earnestly. She knows the others feel the same, too, with nothing unrequited here.

“Except Kahei and Sooyoung unnie,” Yerim adds, leaning back in the chair and patting her stomach. “Since they helped cook dinner.”

“Have fun, losers,” Sooyoung teases with animated eyebrows and a grin that makes Jungeun glares lasers in her direction, past the mountain of shit currently crowding the table like a makeshift centerpiece. At this, Jungeun shares mutual gazes of dread with Jinsol from across the table, who flicks a grain of rice at Sooyoung and lands it on her hair without notice.

“Since when did we put Yerim in charge of assigning cleaning duties?” Jiwoo asks rather incredulously from across the table, chopsticks grabbing the last piece of meat in her plate and directing it towards Yerim, who welcomes it with her mouth opened. “I’ll let you have my precious last piece, and you’ll let me pass this time. No buts.”

Sitting together as a rascal of girls around the dinner table, Jungeun can’t help but to recall everything that had led up to this. The weeks following the fight between her and Jinsol had been a natural one. The most confrontation she and Jinsol had gotten from the members about the matter had only extended to Haseul’s small conversation with Jinsol over the phone the night Jungeun fell asleep to _Black Mirror,_ and on Jungeun’s side, Kahei’s pillar of comfort during the time of her breakdown.

Conventionally enough, the members had respected their space to the very end with a sufficient amount of trust that they would fix what they had started, some kind of unspoken rule and mutual compromise they had established throughout the years. But if Jungeun thinks about it long enough to dissect the pieces, a part of her thinks that maybe, they had seen this coming for a long, long time.

“By the way, for the love of god, don’t break anything this time. Haseul is going to kick our ass if she finds missing plates again,” Sooyoung hollers at them, her voice trailing off from her retreating figure back to her bedroom. 

Splitting up the tasks between the two of them may have not been the best idea—Jungeun doing the actual washing while Jinsol brings over all of the dishes from the table—but it gets the job done, eventually. Jinsol almost shatters their bowls in her overly confident attempt to transfer them over in one tall stack of porcelain, had it not been for Jungeun’s Jinsol-centric instincts, who turns to glance behind her shoulder from her place at the sink just in time to balance the top half of the stack with soapy hands, they would have had to resort with cups, again, in place of proper bowls, and getting their asses kicked by Haseul like Sooyoung had said so unenthusiastically. 

Jungeun’s shoulder bumps with Jinsol’s each time she reaches to set the rinsed dishes on the counter for Jinsol to dry. They aren’t the most efficient duo, but they way her fingertips get pruney from moisture and the front of her shirt wet isn’t as bad as it could be. But even she knows it to be true that such a regularly dreaded task that would usually grate on her nerves had become something bearable because Jinsol is there with her.

“I still can’t believe we won first place tonight,” Jungeun says, staring down at the shiny glass cup that reflects the kitchen lights each time she rotates it. “It really does seem unreal.”

“I don’t think it’s going to set in for me until the next promotion cycle,” Jinsol bemuses with a small laugh, shaking her head. “We can call ourselves _first place artists_ now. That sounds so weird, I can’t get used to it.”

Jungeun pauses, holding the sponge against the side of a slightly chipped bowl, contemplation distracting her from the task at hand. “It’s just, I remember during pre-debut, back when I was in the studio by myself with sweat in my eyes—I was thinking about the faroff idea of a ‘first place’, as if it was impossible or something, so unachievable that I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. And now, here I am, with the title hanging above my head and no idea what to do with it.”

“Fulfilling big dreams is kind of bittersweet,” Jinsol adds, setting a cup in the dish rack. “It’s almost like, after one achieved accomplishment, we feel like we need to replace it with another one, ticking off goals and bucket lists to complete. But I don’t think I ever want to reach the bottom of mine. Live without limits, you know?”

“Yeah,” Jungeun smiles quietly, turns to direct it at Jinsol. “Yeah, exactly.”

“Well, _cheers_ again. To us,” Jinsol says, lifting the dry glass in her hands towards Jungeun. Jungeun catches on and lifts one of the glasses in the sink, wet and covered in soap suds, and clinks their glasses together.

She says, “To us.”

The water runs cold by the time Jungeun reaches the bottom of the sink with the last few chopsticks and spoons scattered, but Jinsol is warm at her side to make up for the chilly water, humming songs under her breath that Jungeun recognizes and songs that she does not. Sometimes, Jinsol will brush her foot against Jungeun’s ankle, mostly on idle, but it doesn’t stop the way her stomach flips each time, such a small gesture that always had her so pliant under Jinsol’s ministrations.

“You’re ridiculously slow at this, Jungeun,” Jinsol says, twirling the towel while waiting for her to rinse the spoons. “Maybe I should have done the washing.”

“You do know that I’m washing dishes for eleven people, right? And weren’t you the one who broke all of our plates last time?”

“That was _one time.”_

“We had to stuff rice into cups because of that one time,” Jungeun laughs and flicks soap suds at Jinsol’s cheek. This, apparently, is the first gunfire signaling the beginning to an intense battle of foam bubbles that leaves them soaked with soggy hair just five minutes later. Jinsol is laughing so hard she has to brace herself over the counter, shoulders shaking from the force, and Jungeun, at her side, watches fondly with laughter of her own, mostly caught in her throat but audible all the same. The fabric of her shirt is sticking uncomfortably to her damp skin, but she does not complain because Jinsol is dripping water off the high curve of her nose.

“We’ll get our ass kicked for flooding the kitchen instead,” Jinsol says, wiping away stray laughter tears at the corners of her eyes and reaching out to ruffle Jungeun’s sopping hair. 

“And it’ll be your fault again,” Jungeun shies away, reaching up to pull Jinsol’s hand from her hair. Naturally Jinsol intertwines them together just as Jungeun turns off the faucet. Her palms sing from the heated insulation of Jinsol’s hand, the sensation travelling all along her arm and right across her chest that blushes the colour of Jinsol’s cheeks. She’s so in love with the ray of Jinsol’s being, and she doesn’t think that will ever change.

As if knowing, Jinsol leans in to press against every inch of her skin she can reach with the tip of her nose, squeezes her wet hand, and says—

-

“Your hands are all cold.”

Jinsol’s nose and cheeks are shining bright red from the cold air, and Jungeun’s sure the skin of her own face is something identical, numb and frozen and blushing all over that she can’t feel her nose wiggling even if she tries. Her socks are wet from the water puddle she’d stepped on a few minutes ago, freezing into the flat of her feet and making her shiver, but none of it really matters because she hadn’t had this much quiet since the new comeback started occupying most of her time.

Somewhere along the way, Jungeun had lost her gloves, fell asleep on Jinsol’s shoulder on their way here that she’d forgotten to check her pockets twice for all of her belongings like her mom used to remind her—it is the consequence that she has aching fingers from the chilly morning for forgetting. But Jinsol’s hands are a furnace burning warm against hers, fire in the clasp of her palm as she rubs them together in search of moderate body heat that had been lost in their quest to find a perfect, private spot to sit along the side of the Han River.

“And your nose is all red,” Jinsol’s voice sounds like a pout, oblivious to the scarlet dusting the high points of her face, too. She leans back to observe and reaches to slide off her scarf before winding it tightly around Jungeun’s neck up to her nose. It smells like Jinsol, and Jungeun inhales flowers like she wants to sneeze. “Can’t get you sick or else our manager will physically pummel me to the floor.”

“I’m okay,” Jungeun tries to swat her away, but Jinsol tugs her closer and fixes the scarf in place. “Now _you’re_ gonna get sick.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Jinsol reassures and retrieves Jungeun’s hands again. “I’m warmer than you are, so I’ll keep us warm. Come on.”

And Jungeun can’t argue, they are two blushing girls with runny noses battling a frosty morning where the sun is barely peeking from the cracks of the mountains. It is nothing out of the ordinary that Jungeun’s hands are inherently cold to the touch, been this way since birth, but wrapped up in Jinsol’s hold with long fingers filling all the missing pieces, Jungeun squeezes back with twice the pressure and holds summer in the palm of her hand like it is all she has ever wanted.

The air is crisp and damp with dawn, the sky starting to lighten faintly over their heads. Everything around them is eerily still, the world only just starting to wake up, and Jungeun is reminded that when Jinsol had dragged her out of bed at ass o’clock in the morning, her complaints were sealed the moment she'd gotten a breath of gratifying fresh air that only the peace of an early morning could ever offer.

Jinsol leads her to a bench just a little beside an enormous tree with dried up branches, the thick trunk promising them a slightly private space from the others, although Jungeun doubts if there even is anyone around at this untimely time of the day. The vastness of the river opens up to offer a clear view of the sky and the pinkening hue at the edge of the world. 

“Jungeun, do you remember that night,” Jinsol starts, when they're settled and huddled close together, their corner of the earth still waiting to be warmed by the sun. “When we talked about falling in love with the sunset?”

Jungeun turns to look at Jinsol, who has her eyes trained far into the distance, like she’s trying to take in everything and nothing at all. _The sunset is pretty,_ as Jinsol had nodded and told her, _but it's something you'll never be able to grasp._ Jungeun had grown up with the weight of the words ingrained into her mind and replayed over and over again like a love song on repeat, but now, she's starting to understand that it's okay to be afraid of the dark.

"Yeah," she nods.

“When I came here alone during our fight, I realized something,” Jinsol says, hand reaching out to grasp at the oranges and golds that are starting to streak the sky. “It was kind of stupid of me to spend so long chasing after the sunset.”

“How so?” Jungeun asks. Jungeun still, always asks.

“Look.”

Jinsol stretches out a finger, and Jungeun follows the direction of it—In front of her, the sun blooms on the horizon, golden petals stretching ever outwards into the rich blue, and above those tangerine silhouette of skyscrapers, caressed to their heady blush by the sun, are clouds that moved in shoals. It’s breathtaking, the way the scenery lights up the world and sprinkles hope to diminishing dreams outshines the fleeting beauty of evenings. With this beam of warmth shining through every corner of her day, she has no reason to be afraid anymore.

And beside Jungeun, Jinsol is heavy on her shoulder but heavier in her heart, existing in speckles of glittery stardust between the spaces of her ribcage—like stars of the binary kind in a galaxy of their own, revolving around each other’s pull. Jungeun’s eyes are trained at the rosy ignition of the sky, but her mind is focused on Jinsol’s hand embracing hers, palms turning a little sweaty where they meet, the same way the sun kissed an ocean’s horizon, day in and out.

 _Hold on_ , her hands tell her, _and don’t let go_. Her mind tells her, _home is where the heart is,_ and her heart tells her, _Jinsol._

“Because the sunrise is just as beautiful.”

**Author's Note:**

> this fic took two months of major block and another two months of late night grinding to complete, and i can't believe it's finally done! i shifted my usual, lighthearted writing style to something more mellow and in-depth, which is part of the reason why it took me so long, but it’s mainly bc i wanted to actually deliver something worthwhile, so i took my time to think about how i wanted to structure the overall big picture instead of impatiently rushing things like i normally would. broke my own heart with this one, and if it broke yours too, i hope i managed to put it back together by giving you a happy ending.
> 
> civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight are the different phases of a sunset, you can read more about it [here](https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/different-types-twilight.html).
> 
> one thing i do want to mention briefly is haseul's health condition. as a fan, i personally feel like it's an invasion of privacy to assume things when none of us really know what happened, that's why i didn't go anything beyond "pills from hospital", which is to leave room for respect and your own interpretation.
> 
> btw, if you haven’t figured it out already, orbits are the stars, lip is the ocean, jinsoul is the sun and chuu is the moon! loosely inspired by a random picture of the sunset i came across on pinterest lol
> 
> i could use some new friends, here:  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/parkjiexy): @parkjiexy  
> 


End file.
